International Phenomenological Society
Heidegger and the Modes of World-Disclosure
Author(s): Sandra Lee Bartky
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Dec., 1979), pp. 212-236
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
"Everygreat thinker thinks only a single thought," says Heidegger
in WasHeisst Denken?' This extraordinary assertion may not be
true of other thinkers but it is without doubt true of him. The
thought of Being (das Sein) is Heidegger's one thought: his later
philosophy is a sustained examination of the meaning of Being, of its
history, of how it has currently abandoned us and of the ways in
which we can once again draw near to it. But the thought of Being,
as Heidegger thinks it, is a very complex thought indeed. Being,
which is to be understood as primordial "event," (Ereignis) as the
ultimate ground of what happens, takes two forms: there occurs what
I shall call a "horizontal"Being-event and a "vertical"Being-event.
The horizontal Being-event refers to the meaning of what has
heretofore happened, to the way in which Being, which is historical
"in its essence," has given birth to the epochs of metaphysics. To
study the horizontal Being-event is to study Heidegger's philosophy of
history which, as we shall see, is the same as his historyof philosophy.
The vertical Being-event, on the other hand, refers to the ways in
which within any epoch beings (das Seiende) come to be the beings
they are. The horizontal Being-event refers to the varieties of worlddisclosure,
the vertical Being-event to the modes of world-disclosure.
Heidegger's notion of a horizontal Being-event has been the subject
of extensive commentary, some of it quite detailed and critical.2
But the vertical Being-event, regarded as a theory of historical happening
itself, has been much neglected by Heidegger commentators.
In this paper, I hope to end that neglect. In Part I, I shall offer
necessarybackground to the discussion by offering a short account of
what Heidegger means by "Being" and by what I 'have called the
"horizontal"Being-event, i.e., Being in its epochal self-unfolding. In
Part II, I shall examine the vertical Being-event. A passage from
Holzwege, in which Heidegger mentions all the modes of worlddisclosure
in a single paragraph, will serve as the key to the discussion;
in the rather extensive commentary which follows, some of the
confusions, limitations, and inadequacies to be found in Heidegger's
development of this notion will, it is hoped, begin to rise to the sur'
Martin Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken? (Tiibingen, 1954), p. 20. Unless
otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
2 See e.g., Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition (Evanston, 1971), Otto
Pbggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen, 1963), and Bernd Magnus,
Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy.
212
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF
WORLD-DISCLOSURE 213
face. Finally, in Part III, I shall subject to direct critical scrutiny the
vertical notion of historical happening as a whole.
I
The great achievement of Heidegger's earlier philosophy, the
profound and elaborate analysis of the ontological structure of
human existence, of Dasein, was undertaken only in order to prepare
the way for a more direct approach to the problem of Being. While
Heidegger'sphilosophy after its much discussed"turn"(Kehre) differs
in many ways from his earlier thought, no feature of the later
philosophy is more pronounced than its growing tendency to regard
Being (das Sein) as an "event" or "occurrence" (Ereignis).3 The
Being-event takes place when there occurs an unveiling of beings (das
Seiende), a disclosure not only of what beings there are but of how
these beings are, i.e., of the manner of their existence and of their
relationships to one another. When there occurs unveiling of beings,
of what-there-is in its totality, a "world"may be said to have happen-
ed.
Heidegger uses the term "world"in at least three different ways:
it can refer to an ultimate totalizing horizon, to a concrete life-world
or to an historical epoch. Let us examine the first sense of "world."
Nothing can be, Heidegger insists, unless it belongs to some articulated
structure to which other beings also belong. Thus, for example,
nothing could be a pencil, i.e., an implement with which to
write, unless there were paper or papyrus or some material on which
to write, marks to be written, a system of communication wherein
these marks derive their meaning and some system of social relations
to support the system of communication. All these things form a
structure both of being and of meaning and apart from such a structure
a thing can neither be nor be understood. Everybeing-complex
belongs to other complexes of being in the way that each item articulated
within a being-complex belongs to that complex. The world
is the most comprehensive being-complex (and thus meaning
-complex) of all: it is the ultimate totalizing horizon, more sensed
than comprehended, whose limits determine the nature and scope of
what-is.4 "World,"then, in the first sense, is a formal or transcendenI
See e.g., Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen, 1957), p. 85,
97, Vortrdgeund Aufsitze (Pfullingen, 1954), P. 99, and Identitit und Dafferenz,
2nd ed. (Pfullingen, 1957), p. 28-29. See also WilliamJ. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger,
Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, 1963), p. 614ff.
Throughout, I shall translate "das Sein" as "Being," "das Seiende" or "Seiendes" as
"beings."
"-- 4 Martin Heidegger4 Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. (Tfibingen, 1953), -sections 14 and
15.
214 PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICALRESEARCH
tal notion in that it refers to the structure of any possible experience
of being-in-a-world.
The second sense of "world"is less formal. In the essay "On-the
Origin of the Art-Work," Heidegger describes the way in which he
believes Van Gogh's painting of a pair of peasant shoes reveals the
Lebenswelt of the old peasant woman to whom they belong:
From the dark opening, of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker
stands forth. In the stiffly solid heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated
tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and
ever-uniform furrows of the field, swept by a raw wind. On the leather
there lies the dampness and saturation of the soil. Under the soles there
slides the loneliness of the field-path as the evening declines. In the shoes
there vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening corn
and its enigmatic self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field.5
The painting has revealed a world: "Towering-up-within-itself the
work discloses a world and keeps this world-in a ruling position."6
Here, what the art work reveals is not the form of the peasant
woman's experience in the sense in which a transcendental investigation
reveals the form of the experience of any life--worldwhatsoever,
but the concrete character of the sphere in which this human individual
lives, works, and dies.
It is the third sense of "world"which is most important for an
understanding of what is meant by the "Being-event." "World"may
refer to the occurrence of some certain comprehension of what there
is so novel, so fundamental and so wide-ranging in character as to
mark the occurrence of an historical epoch. Being, the occurrence of
world, is "epochal"in its essence.7When an epoch comes to pass, this
means that "Being has taken on an essence," that it has bestowed "an
essence upon thought and thus upon man ."I8It is-clearfrom this
that Being, with its epochal character or essence, is here regarded as
the ground of what is ordinarily called history. As the ground of
history, Being bears our destiny: "In Being, originally, every destiny
of beings is already complete."9 Heidegger refers frequently to the
"Geschickdes Seins," the fate or destiny of Being and he makes much
of the etymological connection between Geschick and the verb
schicken, to send. It is Being which "sends"history and what it sends
- s Philosophies of Art and Beauty, ed. Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns
(New York, 1964), p. 663. Hereafter, PAB.
6 PAB, p. 671.
7 Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950), p. 311.
8 Martin Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, mit einem Brief jiber
den Humanismus (Bern, 1947), p. 57-58.
9 Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik? 3rd ed. (Frankfurt, 1954), p. 46.
HEIDEGGERAND THE MODESOF 21
WORLD-DISCLOSURE 5
is our fate or destiny. One commentator, in an attempt to remain
faithful to Heidegger'snotion of destiny as something "sent,"has called
the fateful epoch-founding disclosures of what-is the "mittences"
of Being. "
Heidegger does not view all those periods which are regarded as
historical epochs in history books as genuine "mittences" of Being.
Genuine historical epochs must be what he calls the "epochs of
metaphysics." Each must reveal in its own way some explicit grasp of
the nature of what-is, some guiding metaphysical notion which has
given form to the contemporary disclosure of Being whose character
we shall examine shortly. The identification of "Seinsgeschichte"with
the epochs of metaphysics issues in a curious provincialism: since in
Heidegger's view, metaphysics develops only in the West, historyjust
zs the history of the West."
The epochs of world-history are marked out clearly in Heidegger's
later philosophy and although no explicit claim to that effect is
made, the suggestion is verystrong that they have all been identified:
the world of the Greeks, with its key notions first of physis, then of
idea and energeia was such an epoch; the medieval world of ens
creatum another; while the modern epoch is dominated first by the
concept of "representation," and later by the "will to will," the
voracious subject for whom Being has become nothing but mere
"material"(Bestand).
The mittences of Being do not unfold dialectically; nor is their
sequence in any way necessary. Nevertheless, there is a "logic"to their
unfolding. There is played out in the Seinsgeschickan ever-worsening
concealment of Being, which culminates in an almost total forgetting,
the "world-night"of our own era. Everyepoch is more removed
from the original meaning of Being than the one which preceded it;
indeed, the specific character of each epoch of metaphysics is in fact
determined by the way in which it has concealed Being. But how is
this possible?How can the epochs of world-historywhich reveal Being
also conceal it?
ForHeidegger, the revelation of a world and the "happening"of
truth are identical. In Holzwege, he suggests that the original meaning
of truth which, like the meaning of Being, has been obscured can
best be recoveredby remembering and ruminating on the Greekword
for truth, "aletheia." "Aletheia" means the unconcealment of that
'? Richardson, p. 533ff.
" The epochal disclosures of Being occur only to the "historical peoples,"
among whom Heidegger appears to include only the Greeks, theJews, and the Germans.
For an excellent discussion of the implications of this view, see Alexander
Schwan, Politzsche Philosophie im Denken Heideggers (Kiln u. Opladen, 1965).
216 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
which is, the stepping into the open of that which was heretofore veiled
or obscured.'2 When a world happens, that-which-is comes out of
concealment: "Inthe midst of what is as a whole an open place is present.
A clearing, a lighting is."'3Truth, like Being, is a disclosure of
beings, an unveiling or coming out of concealment.'4 But within the
realm of the unconcealed, concealment also prevails. Error and
dissimulation are given along with the primordial disclosure so that
the occurrence of truth is at the same time an occurrence of untruth:
"The essence of truth, i.e., of unconcealment is dominated throughout
by a denial."" Appearance and reality, so to speak, are given
together: the ambiguous, dissembling character of the disclosure of
Being itself and not human fallibility is the condition of error and
illusion.
When he speaks of a revealing and concealing Being-event, at
least in the context of the Seinsgeschick, Heidegger is claiming that at
the dawt of Western metaphysics, Being disclosed itself in a fundamentally
ambiguous way. The pre-Socraticphysis, "emergence into
the open," is, as Heidegger understands it, remarkably similar to
his own notion of Being as disclosure. But physis, obscure and improperly
understood, gives way to the Platonic idea; with this, there
begins both metaphysics and the long passage of the Western world
into the Irre. Idea, according to Heidegger, is associated originally
with the notion of the "look"or "aspect"of something, although the
idea of a thing is more than its mere visual appearance. Idea is
something never absent from the thing, its essence and it is this
essence which allows any entity to appear at all, to present an aspect.
The pre-Socratic aletheia "goes under the yoke of idea"'6 with two
fateful consequences: Being per se is "forgotten"in its identification
with one feature of the being, here, its standing capacity to hold out
an intelligible aspect and truth comes to be understood as the capacity
of a human perceiver to grasp an essence. The relation of subject
and object has entered philosophy.
12 PAB, p. 676.
" PAB, p. 678.
'4 This conception of the nature of truth is not in competition with other
theories of truth, although Heidegger often writes as if it were. The special
historical event Heidegger calls "truth"or the "essence of truth" is what makes any
conception of truth-as this term is ordinarily understood, indeed any conception at
all first possible; it is the coming-to-be of the widest and most comprehensive
framework which is presupposed by -philosophical questioning. See the essay
"Aletheia" in Vortrdge und Aufsatze pp. 257-282, also Ernst Tugendhat, Die
Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin, 1967).
" PAB, p. 679.
16 Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, p. 46.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 217
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
The history of Western metaphysics is the history of the growing
elevation of the subject at the expense of all else. For Descartes and
his successors, the truth of beings depends entirely on human "certification"
(sicherstellen) in intuition."''7For the idealists, the very
existence of things is made to depend on human consciousness. In
these systems, the world becomes picture: a subject is conceived to
stand before a realm of objects as one stands before a picture. The
subject, originally worldless and isolated from the object, somehow
leaps out of its domain and is able, through its own intellectual activity,
to appropriate, certify or otherwise "master"the object. The unity
of the world, of the domain of objects, is made to depend upon the
unifying acts of consciousness of the subject. Each great idealist
systemdisplaysa different subject exercising its unique act of unification,
be it the Kantian transcendental unity of apperception, the
dialectical unfolding of Hegel's Absolute Spirit or the self-and-other
positing Ego of Fichte.
With Nietzsche, the self-assertion of the subject becomes total
and with this declaration of mastery, "subjectivist" Western
metaphysics reaches its culmination. Being, for Nietzsche, the will-topower,
is nothing but a will-to-will, a will to go on willing i.e., a will
that wills its own perpetuation. All things are for this will and for this
will alone; Being and value are made to depend upon it absolutely.
Whatever ontological independence the object may have retained in
the systems of Nietzsche's predecessors it has lost; instead, there
prevails the perfect swayof subject over object forecast so long ago in
the Platonic doctrine of essence. Since the epochs of metaphysics are
the epochs of world-history, Nietzsche'swill-to-will is no mere curiosity
of the history of ideas: pure will is embodied in the contemporary
technological world-disclosure. Nature becomes a relationship of
forces which can be represented as a system of information, an actually
or potentially calculable energy supply. This energy supply is
for a voracious subject; things are nothing but possibilities of
transformation in accord with the imperialistic dictates of a pure subjective
will.'8 The scientific-technological world-disclosureis the "bad
destiny" of Western metaphysics. But Being, for Heidegger, is
disclosure, "mittence." Other disclosures are possible, indeed,
urgent, unless the "world-night"is to close over us all.
" Holzwege, p. 99.
18 This brief summary can in no way do justice to that complex and original
reading of the meaning of Western "culture" which Heidegger has worked out in
numerous writings over a period of many years. (See above, footnote #2).
218 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
II
Now let us turn from the epoch-founding destiny of Being, from
the "horizontal" Being-event, to what I have called the "vertical" Being
event. The coming to pass of any particular world-epoch is not a
single event but a constellation of unique happenings. These happenings
belong to several categories or modes of disclosure. Nowhere in
the Heideggerian corpus are we offered a more complete enumeration
of the modes of world-disclosure than in this passage from
Holzwege:
Lighting of openness and establishment in the Open belong together.
They are the selfsame single essence of the happening of truth. This happens,
i.e. is historical, in many ways. One essential way in which truth
establishes itself in the entity opened up or disclosed by it is the settingitself-into-work
of truth. Another way in which truth exercises its being is
the deed that grounds a (political) state. Still another way in which truth
comes to shine forth is the nearness of that which is not simply an entity,
but the entity that is most of all. Still another way in which truth grounds
itself is essential sacrifice. Still another way in which truth becomes, is the
thinker's questioning which, as thinking of being, names the latter in its
question-worthiness. On the other hand, science is not an original happening
of truth, but always the extension of a domain of truth already
opened . .
Five types of disclosures have been mentioned in the preceding
passage. Let us scrutinize each in turn.
There are entities, we have been told, in which truth establishes
itself by "setting-itself-into-work." While several modes of disclosure
are "works," the essay in which this citation appears, "Vom Ursprung
des Kunstwerkes," has been concerned primarily with art-works. An
entity is a "work" when "its bringing forth expressly brings the openness
of what-is," a bringing-forth which "first illuminates the openness
of the Open in which it comes forth."20 Truth "does not exist in
itself beforehand, somewhere among the stars"; if there is to be a
disclosed world at all, there must be some being "in which the openness
takes its stand and attains stability."2" A truth-establishing work
then will illuminate the nature of the world in which it is placed. It is
worth noting that for Heidegger, the art-work is an illumination of the
highest order, while science, a wholly derivative activity, shines by
reflected light alone.
Genuine "works" will be revelatory, original, and made. When a
work appears, something has emerged "such as never was before and
19 PAB, p. 685.
20 PAB, p. 685.
21 PAB, p. 684.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 219
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
will afterwardnever be again."22This unique entity has the character
of a thing manufactured: ". . . in the word 'work' we hear what is
worked."23The manufacture of a work, however, need not involve
the production of a physical object for, as we shall see, poems and
political states are "works"too.
Everyart-work, according to Heidegger, has two features which
belong to its essence: it reveals a world and it participates in the selfconcealment
of the "mere thing," of the "earth." Van Gogh's painting
of a pair of peasant shoes, for example, can reveal the Lebenswelt
of the peasant woman to whom the shoes belong. But the art-work
has another function as well. In the artistic medium there is revealed
matter, the earth, on which a world (in this sense) is erected. Here,
matter is revealed as it is in itself, "undisclosed and unexplained."24
What Heidegger seems to mean by this is that theoretical accounts of
the nature of the physical world fail to do justice to our experience of
the brute "thereness"of things, to their essential mysteriousnessand
impenetrability. "World"and "earth"in the art-workaresaid to be in
a permanent state of strife or struggle, a struggle which allows each
element to come into its own proper nature. A sculptor, for example,
may wish to use marble to portray folds of cloth. But the medium
refuses to vanish into the mere content or "expression"of the work,
and, because of this refusal, its own ineradicable nature ("the
massivenessand heaviness of stone") first comes into view. Heidegger
identifies the basic "strife"in the art-work with what is ordinarily
regarded as "artisticform," while the parties to the struggle, "world"
and "earth," are identified, somewhat loosely, with the self-revealing
and self-concealing features of the Being-event itself.25 \
The second way in which future comes to pass is in the establishment
of the polis. In Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, the polls is referred
to specifically as a "work,""the work of the polis, the historical
abode where all other works are established and preserved ..."26
This characterization of the state, in spite of the fact that it appears
to occupy of privileged position in regard to other works, is surprisingly
empty. What is to distinguish the state from the "world"which
is also an historical abode wherein other works are established and
preserved?Nowhere in Heidegger's philosophy are we told anything
more about-the-"deed that grounds a political state," and, in view of
22 PAB, p. 685.
23 PAB, p. 682.
24
PAB, p. 673.
25
For a critical study of Heidegger's aesthetics, see my paper "Heidegger's
Philosophy of Art," BritishJournal of Aesthetics, October, 1969, pp. 353-371.
Z.
Martin Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik (Tilbingen, 1953), p. 146.
220 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
the importance of the subject, this must be regarded as a veryserious
omission."
Philosophical thinking is another in which "truth sets itself into
work." Philosophy is a "work,"too, a "workof words," as is poetry.
The close resemblance between poetry and philosophy is a favorite
Heideggerian theme, and, in this, he approaches the position of
modern positivism. Unlike the positivists, however, he assignsto both
poetry and philosophy cognitive functions of the highest order. Both
reveal the Being of beings in language; both name what is. The
primordial saying of thinkers and poets frees and discloses a world,
ever while continuing to conceal it.28Being-disclosure in these modes
must be linguistically innovative and creative, for, in order to accomplish
a unique and novel saying of what-is, both poet and
philosopher must become the forgers of a new language. Throughout
his work, Heidegger uses the terms "thinker"and "poet"not in their
ordinary sense, but in what might be called an "honorific"sense. No
one, in other words, deservesto be regarded as a genuine philosopher
or poet whose "word-work"has not announced an original disclosure
of Being.
As the uttering of new "names" for Being, genuine thinking is
seminal or originative.29Even though it may appear that a stringent
demand for originality has been laid upon the thinker, the new saying
is really occasioned by Being itself. Thinking belongs to Being and it
is occasioned by Being; it allowsitself to be claimed by Being in order
to speak the truth of Being; it is l'engagement par l'Etre pour
l'Etre."30Being "essentializes" itself in the thought of originative
thinkers and it is in and through the essential thinking of Being that
the relation of Being to the human essence is brought to fruition. In
the thought of the originative thinker, "Being comes to word" for
"language is the house of Being."'"The thinker not only names what
is, he must preserve in his language the primordial saying of other
thinkers as well.32
But who are the originative thinkers?Heidegger's answer to this
27 Alexander Schwan has made a very interesting attempt to piece together a
"political philosophy" for Heidegger on the basis of scattered references and allusions.
(See above, footnote #11).
28 Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen, 1959), p. 200.
29 Was Heisst Denken? p. 71ff.
30 Brief iber den Humanismus, p. 54.
3' Brief, p. 53.
32 Was Heisst Denken? p. 71. This preservation is no "objective" storing of
another's ideas. Heidegger regards "objective" interpretation as an impossibility,
since no interpretation can be independent of one's choice of perspective.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 221
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
question is not startling. He has paid particular attention to
Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant,
Hegel, and Nietzsche. There is every indication that he regards
himself as a seminal thinker too. The thought of these thinkers is
originative in that their "namings"of Being have initiated epochs in
the historical self-essentializationof Being. While Heidegger never offers
an exhaustive list of the seminal metaphysical notions of the past
or even an indication of the way in which one might go about drawing
up such a list, it is clear from his reading of the historyof philosophy
that the following metaphysical concepts are crucial: physis; idea;
energeia; natura; ens creatum; ratio; intuition; representation;
Spirit; will.
Poetry, like philosophy, is a "workof words." In fom Ursrng
des Kuntswerkes,Heidegger distinguishes between poetry (Dichtung)
in the wider sense and what he calls "Poesy"(Poesie) or poetry in the
narrower sense. "Poesy"refers to what poets write, to actual poems
themselves. "Poetry"is the revealing capacity of language itself, the
primordial speech which discloses that something is; it is "the saga of
the unconcealment of what is."33 As revelatory or primordial
language, poetry, in contrast to other, derivative forms of speech, "is
not only and not primarily an audible and written expression of
something to be communicated. . . but language brings what is as
something that isinto the Open for the first time."34Since trutht" for
Heidegger means the same as "unconcealment," poetry, or language
in its primordial disclosing function, is simply "the institution of
truth.""3Poetry in this sense, which Heidegger sometimes calls just
'"saying,"(Sagen) is the letting appear in language of those modes of
thought and experience which determine the character and revealthe
destiny of an "historical"people.
All languageof mancomesto passin thesaying,andassuchit isgenuine
language in the strict sense of the word, although in each case the
nearnessto the appropriatingevent will be different. Each genuine
language,becauseit is assignedto man by the movementof the saying,
becauseit is sentto him, is thereforefateful(Geschick-lich).36
What all this means is that for Heidegger the essence of language is to
manifest the Being-event and this essence he chooses to call poetryry"
Poesy, poetry in the narrower sense, has a privileged position in
the domain of the arts. The articulation of world-disclosure, we are
33
PAB, p. 695-696.
34
PAB, p. 694-695.
13 PAB, p. 695.
36 From Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 264, as translated by Walter Biemel in
"Poetry and Language in Heidegger," Heidegger and Language, ed. Joseph
Kockelmans, (Evanston, 1972), p. 93.
222 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
told, occurs first in the poesy of an historical people. As "the most
original form of poetry in the essential sense," poesy is prior not only
to "thought" but to all other art forms too. Why does Heidegger
believe this to be true? The claim is worth quoting in its entirety:
Language itself is poetry in the essential sense. But since language is the
happening in which for man at any time what is first discloses itself as being,
poesy, or poetry in the narrower sense, is the most original form of
poetry in the essential sense.37
This passage seems to suggest a necessary connection between the
emergence of disclosing language and the creation of particular
"poetic" word-works. However, I see no reason at all to assume a
necessary connection between poetry in the wider sense and poetry in
the narrowersense. Instead, we seem to be in the presence of nothing
more than a straightforwardempirical claim, namely, that poets "in
a narrowersense" are the first ones to bring before the consciousness
of an "historical"people its characteristic modes of thought and way
of grasping Being. Since Heidegger seems not to grant the existence
of any "historical"peoples other than Greeks, Jews, and Germans,
this empirical claim is seen to be sometimes true and sometimes not in
ways which fail to be interesting. It is obviously true that the work of
Homer both discloses and helps to-formthe Greekcomprehension of
Being and is prior by many centuries to what, at least for us, are other
epoch-founding disclosuresof the Greekworld.38But it can hardly be
claimed that there is a poet, not even Goethe, who stands in the same
relation to the Germanpeople as Homer does to the Greeksor the Old
Testament writers to the Jews. Indeed, Heidegger's own interpretation
of the development of German thought bearsthisout. In Der Satz
vom Grund, he traces the contribution of German ontology to the
Westerncomprehensionof Being. This ontology is largelythe worknot
of poets but of two thinkers, Leibniz and Kant, and it consistsin the
transformation of an inherited ontological presupposition, the principle
of sufficient reason, first into the concept of ratio and then into
the concept of Being as object for a human subject, in which form it is
decisive for the development of technik and the contemporary grasp
of Being as the "willto will." The disclosureof Being as the will to will
is itself the work of another German thinker, Nietzsche, whom
Heidegger regards not as a great poet-even though there might be
some warrant for doing so -but as "the last metaphysician.""
37 PAB, p. 695.
38 Heidegger discusses the epoch-founding of Homer's poetry in Einfuhrung in
die Metaphysik, p. 131.
39 Holzwege, p. 200.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 223
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
We have now considered all the modes of world-disclosurewhich
Heidegger calls "works":worksof art; worksof words (of which one,
poesy is also a work of art) and that work which is the polls. Another
way in which world-disclosure may occur is through "the nearness of
that which is not simply an entity but the entity that is most of all."
This entity is, of course, God, the being who exists more fully and
with more actuality than other beings, the being who is most real of
all, the ens realissimum. This mode of world-disclosure, the religious
mode, is nowhere described as needing a workfor its realization or as
issuing in a work. This is odd, because wheneverHeidegger deals with
the religious tradition of the West, he does so almost exclusively in
terms of its theology and theology, like metaphysics, is clearly a "work
of words."
In a recently published work, Phinomenologie und Theologie,
Heidegger sets out what he takes to be the central task of theology: it
is the conceptual self-interpretation of the believing Christian existence.40As
the self-clarification of a certain mode of human existence-
only, theology can furnish us neither with speculative
knowledge of the Divine Being nor with a "philosophyof man" in the
sense of an ontological analysisof the structure of Dasein. The entire
content of theology is faith, the human responseto what is revealed in
faith as well as the content of the religious disclosure to the faithful.
But most Christian theology is hopelessly compromised by its
reliance upon philosophical concepts; it 'objectifies" its content by
making use of conceptual systemswherein Being is reduced to objectfor-a-subject,
i.e., by making use of metaphysics.
For what Heidegger's remarks point to is a radical criticism of almost all
forms of theology which have been developed on the basis of the paradigm
suggested by St. Augustine. Heidegger's criticism of these forms of
theology runs parallel to his equally radical criticism of all philosophical
views developed in the West from Plato to Nietzsche . .. once one subscribes
to both these views, namely that classical metaphysics is to be overcome
and that classical metaphysics has been a constitutive part of most
theologies, it becomes obvious why almost all forms of theology which
have been developed in the past are to be overcome as well.41
However, a nonobjectifying theology is at least possible for contemporary
theology, insofar as nonobjectifying speech and thinking are
possible. Not all thinking requires "representation"and the merely
instrumental use of language which this implies, (vorstellen), i.e., the
transformation of all content into an "object," for if it did, poetry
would be impossible. In general, the possibility of a nonobjectifying
40
Martin Heidegger, Phdnomenologie und Theologie (Frankfurt, 1970).
4' Joseph Kockelmans, "Heidegger on Theology," Southwestern Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. IV, no. 3, p. 106.
224 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
(and thus nonsubjectivist) theology is tied to the possibility of overcoming
the entire metaphysical tradition of the West as Heidegger
conceives it and learning to think "originatively."42
This discussion of theology raises a number of perplexing questions.
First, we are led to wonder about the status of non-Christian
theology. Is it also "objectifying"theology? If not, then what of the
nature of its disclosure of the divine? Even if non-Western theology is
dominated by some sort of subject-object schema, is its content simply
to be assimilated to Christian theology? If not, then what does this
theology disclose which Western theology does not? In Unterwegszur
Sprache, Heidegger speaks with some approval of Zen Buddhism on
the grounds that its approach to Being avoids "representational"
thinking. But he fails to enlighten us concerning the specific religious
disclosure which Buddhism's nonobjectifying speech contains. Can
we learn anything at all about what aworld-disclosureisbyexamining
religious disclosuresin other traditions?What of nonrepresentational
theologies within our own tradition? Meister Eckhart, for example,
seems not to conceive the divine within the framework of those
metaphysical schemas which were known to him. Is what is disclosed
in Eckhart's writing then different from the something or someone
disclosed in the Summa Theologica?43What are we to make of a
religious disclosure - or any disclosure - which is substantially at
variance with the sorts of disclosureswhich are characteristic of, indeed,
which determine the nature of the world-epoch in which they
occur? If an Eckhartor a Kierkegaardwere to succeed in producing a
nonobjectifying theology, would we be compelled to regard him as a
world-historical anomaly?And what of those religious writings which
are not ordinarily regarded as theology at all? I refer of course to the
great mystic and confessional literature of Christianity, a literature of
shuddering and dread, of rapture and ecstasy. The writings of St.
Teresa and of St. John of the Crossrecord encounters, ravishments,
states beyond words, moments of contact between a human I and a
divine Thou. Here God is not an object, not even the ens realissimum,
but an awesome Presence, a Thou with whom one isjoined in ecstatic
42 This question is beyond the scope of this paper. For a critical examination of
the subject, see my paper, "Originative Thinking in the Later Philosophy of
Heidegger," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March, 1970, pp.
368-381.
. . . the causa sui . . . philosophy utters this as the appropriate
(sachgerecht) name for God. To this God, a human being can neither pray nor
sacrifice. Before the causa sui, one can neither fall on one's knees in fear (Scheu),
nor, before this God, can one make music and dance." Identitat und Differenz, p.
70. Is the God before whom I fall on my knees, then, different from the one I call
the causa sui?
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF
WORLD-DISCLOSURE 225
union, a mysterium trememdum. In the light of his attack oniChristian
philosophy, it is odd that Heidegger devotes virtually no attention
at all to the literature of Christian experience. Perhaps Heidegger
tends to ignore types of disclosure which fall outside the
disclosure-scheme of the West-as he conceives it, i.e., outside the
"horizontal"Being-event of an ever more ravenous subjectivism. At
any rate, the question we asked about Eckhart's theology can be
repeated: has something or Someone been disclosed in the Dark
Night of the Soul that was not disclosed in the Summa? The real difficulty
here has to do with what is to count as a disclosure and how it
is possible to distinguish one disclosure from another.
The fifth and final mode of world-disclosure is called "essential
sacrifice." No light is shed upon the meaning of this phrase anywhere
in the essay. This silence puts our imagination into play. Perhaps
"essentialsacrifice"refersto the sortsof sacrificespeople make, usually
in extraordinary situations only, to preserve what they find most
worthy of preserving. Might not an "essential sacrifice" then reveal
something about the nature of value? Since, taken together, the other
modes of world disclosure encompass many of the most vital domains
of human activity, can we now expect that Heidegger will give some
consideration to ethical revelation as he has done to poetic,
philosophical, and religious revelation? Unfortunately however, our
imaginative projection from the text ends in a blind alley: nowhere in
Heidegger's thought is an independent status granted to the
disclosure of what is right.
Forsome clarification of what is meant by "essentialsacrifice"we
must turn to the Postscriptto What is Metaphysics?There the theme
of sacrifice grows out of a discussion of essential thinking. While
Heidegger does not use the precise term "essential sacrifice" in this
text, it seems safe to assume that "sacrifice"and "essentialsacrifice"
are the same:
Sacrifice is rooted in the nature of the event through which Being claims
man for the truth of Being. Therefore it is that sacrifice brooks no
calculation, for calculation always miscalculates sacrifice in terms of the
expedient and the inexpedient, no matter whether the aims are set high or
low. Such calculation distorts the nature of sacrifice. The search for a
purpose dulls the clarity of the awe, the spirit of sacrifice ready prepared
for dread, which takes upon itself kinship with the imperishable."
That dread with which the spirit of sacrifice must be prepared is what
we experience in the confrontation with nothingness; it is "the terror
of the abyss"which seizes us when we contemplate "nothing."45In
" From What is Metaphysics? as translated by R.F.C. Hull and Alan Crick in
Existence and Being, ed. Werner Brock (Chicago, 1949), p. 390.
" Hull and Crick, p. 386.
226 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
What is Metaphysics? Heidegger is careful to distinguish
"nothingness"from the merely nugatory, the absolutely nonexistent.
An experience of "nothing," of the limit and opposite of what-is has
the effect of throwing the totality of what-there-is (i.e., the totality of
beings) into relief: it allows us to grasp beings as such. This in turn
liberates us from our normal, narrowlyutilitarian preoccupation with
them and it prepares the way for an experience of what is wholly
other than beings, of Being itself, "the vastness of that which gives
everybeing the warrant to be."46Thus, in order to think Being essentially,
we must be "ready for dread," for the suspension of familiar
and comforting attitudes towardsthings and for the experience of uncanniness
and fear which accompanies the confrontation with what is
other than all-that-is. This is the dread which the spirit of sacrifice
must take upon itself.
But why is sacrifice forbidden to search for a purpose? We are
told that sacrifice is a "valediction to everything that 'is'on the road
to the preservation of the favour of Being."47 What this means,
presumably, is that by making a "valediction" to what Being has
disclosed we draw nearer to Being itself. To "sacrifice" is to hold
oneself open for the disclosure of Being. But this disclosure is never
knowable in advance of its occurrence. Thus, sacrifice has no defined
purpose: it involves neither the exchange of some advantage for the
sake of an anticipated benefit nor any calculation in terms of what is
expedient. Clearly, what Heidegger has in mind is not what we would
ordinarily call sacrifice at all; in these passages he is sketching in an
impressionistic way a certain posture in regard to what-there-is, an
attitude of awe and gratitude, of "hidden thanking which alone does
homage to the grace wherewith Being has endowed the nature of
man."48 This "splendid poverty"of the spirit is meant to prepare the
way for a new mode of comportment in regard to Being, a conduct
which will make possible a new disclosure. In our key passage in
Holzwege, the reference to sacrifice as a way in which truth happens,
as a mode of world-disclosure, is odd in the extreme, for it can now be
seen that sacrifice is not a mode of world-disclosure at all. While
truth may happen if we "sacrifice," sacrifice is not how truth happens;
unlike poetry, philosophy, or religion, sacrifice is not a form
taken by the primordial logos. That particular human comportment
which Heidegger calls "essentialsacrifice"may make world-disclosure
possible, but in and of itself, it is empty and lacking in content. While
I do not wish to suggest in any way that what Heidegger calls "the
46
Hull and Crick, p. 38t.
47 Hull and Crick, p. 390.
48
Hull and Crick, p. 389.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 227
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
spirit of sacrifice" is easy to achieve, I find it difficult to regard "essential
sacrifice" as anything more than a reverent waiting.
III
Since Heidegger regards his own thinking as a pathway, a venture
still underway, it may seem unfair to subject this thinking to
criticism. But however tentative his conclusions, it is clear that
Heidegger asks his readership to follow him, to use his thinking as a
springboard into the "problematic" of the history and meaning of Being.
Being, in his thinking, is given precisely in the possibility of its
occurrence49 and in the sequence and modes of its occurrence, that is,
in the horizontal and vertical Being-events. While no aspect of an
ambitious speculative "thinking" such as Heidegger's can be comprehended
apart from the whole, it is necessary to approach the
whole cautiously and by degrees. Thus, in spite of the sometimes
distorting limitations of perspective which follow upon the examination
of a part in isolation from the totality to which it belongs, in what
follows, I shall undertake a critical examination of the "vertical" or
intraepochal Being-event.
First, we wonder whether Heidegger has offered a complete
enumeration of the modes of world-disclosure. Might new worlddisclosures
disclose themselves in totally new forms? Heidegger does
not offer a demonstration that his list is complete or a hint as to how
we might go about discovering other modes of past world-disclosures,
if there are any as yet unnamed. The impression we get from Heidegger's
writings, if not from the letter of his teaching, is that all the
modes have at least been identified. But is this so? Does the popular
culture of an epoch, for example, reveal less about the event of the
advent of destiny than the period's fine art or philosophy? Or is
popular culture, certainly "world-disclosing" in some important
sense, simply to be subsumed under fine art? This would be a
mistake, it seems to me, for the revelatory character of popular art
lies precisely in the way it differs from fine art. The scope and boundaries
of Heidegger's modes of disclosure are unclear and to this lack
of clarity must be added our uncertainty about the completeness of
his list.
The absence of anything like an "ethical" revelation seems to be
a serious oversight too. What is the reason for this? We know that
Heidegger has opposed the bifurcation of the world into a value-free
49 In Brief uber den Humanismus (p. 57), Being is called "the quiet power of
the possible." Being, properly understood, is the possibility of other disclosures as
well as the one it has already "sent."
228 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
region of objects for a subject on the one hand and a realm of wholly
subjective "values" on the other. According to the phenomenological
account of Being and Time, we first comprehend the beings which
surround us as "ready-to-hand," as things with which to realize our
intentions. Our aims and intentions, in a mutually conditioned process,
are themselves formed in response to the intrinsic capacity or
lack of capacity of things themselves to realize them. In the beginning
then, in that commerce with things which precedes the emergence of
"objectivity," the uses and values of things are given with the things
themselves. Heidegger has held fast to this position through the transition
in his philosophy from an analysis 6f the historical life-world in
his earlier work to the later emphasis on the epoch-founding Beingevent.
The thinker whose thinking is epochal names what-is and in
this act, an act which is at once the discovery and the bestowal of
meaning, he must, presumably, name what-is-good as well. But is
this true? It is often claimed that an epistemology is implied by every
ontology and an ontology by every epistemology. Does the same principle
apply to axiology? Is there a theory of value implicit in every
metaphysics or only in the ones we are to regard as epoch-founding?
In fact, what many classical philosophers have had to say on ethical
themes, especially in the domain of social ethics has been relatively
independent of their metaphysical teaching. Once again, we are
plagued by the lack of attention Heidegger has paid to the question of
the scope and boundaries of a world-disclosure.
But more than a lack of precision is at stake here. In his failure
to say anything specific about the mode of disclosure of such things as
rights, duties, and obligations, Heidegger has surely omitted something.
His tendency, so it seems, is to ignore those aspects of worlddisclosure
which have an intrinsic reference to the Other, just as in
Being and Time too little attention was paid to the sociality of human
existence. Certainly, poets in their tragedies and comedies made
palpable for the Greeks the dimensions of their own ethical universe.
But was this the only mode of the disclosure of these realities? Was it
the original mode? What is the counterpart in the modern world to
the Promethean value-revealing role played in the ancient world by a
Homer, a Hesiod, or a Sophocles?
Are the assignment of rights and duties perhaps a part of the
"deed that grounds a political state," the grounding of a world in the
establishment of a polis? This mode is the sketchiest and least
developed of all the genuine modes of disclosure: it is no more than
mentioned. We do not know what Heidegger takes a state to be, how
precisely it discloses a world, whether the establishment of any
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF
WORLD-DISCLOSURE 229
political state is revelatory of the meaning of Being or just the
establishment of some states, etc. The theme of political disclosure is
too ill-defined to allow a determination of how or even whether an
ethical disclosure might belong to it.
Curiously enough, Heidegger's treatment of science, which he
does not elevate to the status of a full-fledged mode of disclosure, is
more satisfactory than his treatment of either ethics or politics. The
capacity of the physical sciences to disclose a world is not denied but
their revelatory character is said to be derived from a more fundamental
ontological disclosure. It is metaphysics which lays open
some domain of being capable of exploitation by the special sciences.
An original ontological revelation illuminates the "horizon" wherein
first appear the kinds of beings which something like science can then
examine. Now, it cannot be denied that scientific ideas are born from
metaphysical ones: it is well known, to mention one case, that the early
Renaissance revival of neo-Platonism in northern Italy was instrumental
in the rise of modern mathematical physics. Moreover,
many thinkers (e.g., Thomas Kuhn) have shared with Heidegger the
belief that scientific investigation is at all times dependent upon a
conception of the nature of being which is not itself a product of the
application of scientific method. But what Heidegger concludes from
this is that science is in essence no more disclosive than the
metaphysics which gave birth to it. Has he not thereby committed
some version of the genetic fallacy? Might not the internal dynamic
by which science unfolds lead to a novel disclosure, to a disclosure different
in kind from what preceded it and made it possible? Can we
not imagine a state of affairs whereby a science, in the course of its
own development, takes a qualitative leap and begins to generate
what in Heidegger's language would be called "new names" for Being?
Is there anything in the conception of a science which makes
such a leap impossible? Perhaps a non-Heideggerian reading of the
history of science would reveal fundamental alterations in its conception
of the Being of the beings it investigates quite independent of any
intervening ontological disclosure.
Let us now consider some problems which have to do with the
unity of the modes of disclosure. Heidegger's view of the vertical
Being-event suggests that "world," like the Spenglerian "culture"
which it somewhat resembles, is a unitary phenomenon. What this
means, presumably, is that within one epoch, one world-disclosure
prevails. Are the Trobiand Islanders, then, not in the same "world" as
the advanced Western societies? The larger question is this: can there
be incompatible disclosures of Being within the same world-epoch?
230 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Are primitive peoples in our world only insofar as the planetary
domination of technology, of the "will-to-will" is going to engulf them
someday? Has Being failed to disclose itself to them directly? If it has
not then what is the content of a disclosure outside the epochs of
Western metaphysics and what can it teach us about the nature of
disclosure in general? But for Heidegger, such questions are
unanswerable: Being discloses itself in certain fateful formulations,
simpliciter. Any attempt to "explain" some disclosure with the help
of, let us say, a materialist method would lead us back into at best a
specific world-disclosure and away from the rumination on Being per
se, the ground of any disclosure. But are we, Heidegger's readers,
content to remain within this circle? And what of thinkers in a single
epoch (provided we can determine when one epoch begins and
another leaves off) who hold apparently incompatible views? Perhaps
one test or criterion of what constitutes an epoch is that all the significant
thinking within it, even if apparently discordant is in fact
dominated by one seminal conceptual framework. This is neither an
unfamiliar nor an implausible view.. In Search for a Method, for example,
Sartre claims that Marxism has defined the boundaries within
which all contemporary philosophy must move. The claim that every
epoch has its idee'fixe cannot be pursued here; it is sufficient to point
out that Heidegger and his followers are committed to it and may
have to defend it one day by a more precise examination of historical
texts than has yet been undertaken. This may prove to be difficult.
The attempt to grasp the unity of the modes of disclosures brings
with it still another problem. When there occurs a "mittence" of Being,
according to Heidegger, profound changes take place in certain
significant domains of human activity. Now a mittence, or world, is
one, while the modes of its disclosure are many. Further, insofar as a
world has a singular character, its modes of disclosure must somehow
display the same content. But what are we to make of the claim that
the plastic art of an epoch, its music and dance, its poetry, religion,
and metaphysics are all disclosures of the same mittence of Being? To
make good such a claim, would -it not be necessary to utter, to point,
or somehow to refer to that mittence of Being which all genuine
disclosures in any epoch are disclosures of? And in order to do this,
would it not be necessary to translate what some modes of disclosure
disclose into other modes of disclosure? Heidegger has not wrestled
with the problem of shared content. When he wished to characterize
the relationship to Being which has put its mark upon on epoch, his
usual way is to make reference to the way in which its thinkers have
"named" Being. But is it possible to translate what a poem or pain-
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 231
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
ting discloses into the language of a metaphysical theory? Is a translation
in the other direction any easier, i.e., a translation from the
language of metaphysics into the "language" of music or gesture?
Heidegger seems to be unaware of the enormous, perhaps insuperable
difficulties involved in such projects of translation. He seems equally
unaware that the notion of a vertical Being-event as he has developed
it is tacitly committed to the intertranslatability of all world-revealing
modes of disclosure.
Even if we could somehow characterize the one mittence which
all modes of disclosure within a world-epoch disclose, it remains
unexplained why there ought to be a variety of modes of worlddisclosure
at all. In order to see what this difficulty is, we shall have to
backtrack a bit. We know that for the later Heidegger, Being takes
-the-initiative in- the-coming-to-pass- of- the Being event.
If in SZ (Sein und Zeit) it could be said that "only insofar as There-being
(Dasezn) is, is there Being," this must be understood in the sense that only
insofar as the lighting-process comes-to-pass in a There does it come-topass
at all. That it comes-to-pass, however, does not depend on the There
but on the spontaneity of Being which thus e-mits itself among beings.
The There is "thrown," and it is Being that does the "throwing." We
understand this in no ontic sense, of course, but only as an insistence on
the fact that Being maintains the primacy in an event that defacto takes
place.50
Even though that a mittence of Being comes-to-pass does not depend
upon Dasein, we know that how Dasein comports itself has much to
do with-the nature of the disclosure. If this is true, then, perhaps the
different modes of existence chosen by Dasein are responsible for the
variety in the modes of disclosure. Perhaps what happens is simply
this: Being discloses itself poetically in the "saying" of poets,
metaphysically in the "saying" of metaphysicians, etc. Elementary as
such an explanation may appear however, it will not do at all, for it is
just in the commerce with Being that one becomes a poet or
metaphysician; the poets do not exist first in order later to deliver
themselves of the meaning of Being in poetic disclosures. Art and
philosophy, when they are genuine, are themselves occurrences of Be-
ing.
Problems about the unity of the Being-event are thrown more
sharply into focus if we compare Heidegger's later philosophy with
that of Hegel which, at least in scope and grandeur, it resembles. For
Hegel, the Being-event is the progressive growth in self-awareness of
the Absolute Spirit. This Spirit and its activity we are able to com-
50 Richardson, p. 532. I have added material in brackets. See Brief fiberden
Humanismus, p, 75ff.
232 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
prehend somewhat in analogy to the sort of consciousness we ourselves
possess. The Absolute is-like a great genius, a restless genius like
Leonardo da Vinci, who struggles to realize himself now in one form,
now in another. Overflowing with energy, his substance is not exhausted
in the mastering of painting: he is impelled to move on to architecture,
to natural science, even to military science. Since all his
activities are modes of self-expression, the content which discloses
itself in any of his activities as well as the unity of content disclosed in
all the activities he undertakes in any particular period of his life are
determined by the degree of self-realization he has achieved in that
period. As his self-understanding becomes more profound, the content
of his modes of self-expression changes. The sequence of his
modes of expression is obedient to the principle of growth in his consciousness
of self, a principle which is responsible too for the coordination
among these modes in any particular epoch.
But such a way of grasping the unity of the historical process is
impossible for Heidegger. Being is not a single consciousness nor are
the various modes of world-disclosure ways in which this consciousness
comes to an understanding of itself. The vertical Beingevent
cannot be understood in analogy to the operation of human
consciousness or to the history of its development. The unity of the
modes of world-disclosure remains a mystery because unlike Hegel's
forms of Objective Spirit, these modes are not expressions of a single
principle at work in the historical process, a principle which retains
its self-identical character independent of the variety of its manifestations.
Being, for Heidegger, is not God, not a thing or a substance,
not a subject, consciousness or spirit. It is not a telos-driven process
nor is it a noumenon whose phenomenal appearance is the historical
process itself. Heidegger's radical "historization" of the philosophy of
history has removed from it everything suprahistorical, iI but with this
removal has he not perhaps removed the possibility of discovering the
origin of the unity-in-multiplicity of the Being-event? The primordial
"event" is nothing but the disclosures which have occurred,
disclosures already made of what-there-is and of how-it-is and, in addition
to these, the possibility of some future transforming disclosure
which will save the human "essence" from extinction. "Being" is
nothing but what has been and what might be, but in this "nothing
but" is expressed not only the gratuitousness of the unity and variety
of its occurrences but the utter gratuitousness of its occurrence at all.
" Heidegger regards Hegel's Absolute Spirit as just such an ahistorical remnant.
Hegel is still under the sway of an ontology of substance: the Absolute, the
Being of beings, is a subject, a being (ein Seiendes). Thus, Hegel is accused of having
forgotten the "ontological difference" between Being and beings. See-"Hegels
Begriff der Erfahrung" in Holzwege.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF
WORLD-DISCLOSURE 233
How does it stand with the modes of world-disclosure? Of the five
modes mentioned in our key citation from Holzwege, one, essential
sacrifice, has turned out not to be a mode of disclosure at all.
Another, the polis, is little more than merely mentioned. The
religious mode of disclosure undergoes throughout the Heideggerian
corpus a virtual reduction to theology which, he holds, has in our
tradition drawn its sustenance from metaphysics, even though in so
doing, it misunderstands its own proper task. If theology is so heavily
in debt to metaphysical thinking, we are, in effect, left with two
modes of world disclosure: art and "thinking." As we have seen,
poetry (Poesie) is said to take precedence over the other arts, both
because it is the first to emerge and because of its nearness to the
original disclosive capacity of language itself. But how well has
Heidegger succeeded in distinguishing between poetry and thinking?
Both poet and thinker are workers of words. Both dwell in the
"house of Being" in that both disclose a world by the uttering of new
"names" for what-there-is. How then do they differ? Heidegger does
not attempt to distinguish poetry from philosophy by assigning to
each its own peculiar mode of disclosure, its own matter or its own
method. In Was Heisst Denken? he does assign to poetry its own truth
which is called "beauty." Beauty is one fate of the essence of truth,
the disclosure of that which eternally does not appear (das ewig
Unscheinbare) and is therefore invisible in its most radiant manifestation
(das erscheinendste Scheinen).52 But what can "that which eternally
does not appear" be but Being itself, Being which does not appear
wholly or in toto and which, when it does appear, tends toward
self-concealment? Beauty is one way in which Being or truth happens,
the most "radiant" way. But we are not told what "radiant" means or
why a philosophical system cannot be an "erscheinendste Scheinen."
For Heidegger, as for Keats, truth is beauty and beauty truth; the differentia
of beauty are never given.",
Philosophy and poetry are regarded not only as distinct modes of
disclosure but also as separated from one another "by an abyss":
That which is extraordinary (das Ungewdhnliche) reveals itself (dffnet
sich) and reveals that which is manifest (das Offene) only in poetry (or, in
its own time and in a manner separated (from poetry) by an abyss
(abgrundig davon verschieden) in 'thinking' . . .5
The same point is made again in the Postscript to Was ist
Metaphysik?
52 Was Heisst Denken? p. 8.
5 Compare the similarly vague and unsatisfactory treatment of beauty in
PAB, p. 680-681.
" Martin Heidegger, Erlduterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt,
1951), p. 97.
234 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Obedient to the voice of Being, thought seeks the Word through which
the truth of Being may be expressed. Only when the language of historical
man is born of the Word does it ring true. But if it does ring true, then the
testimony of the soundless voice of hidden springs lures it ever on. The
thought of Being guards the Word and fulfills its function in such guardianship,
namely care for the use of language. Out of long guarded
speechlessness and the careful clarification of the field thus cleared,
comes the utterance of the thinker. Of like origin is the naming of the
poet. But since like is only like insofar as difference allows, and since
poetry and thinking are most purely alike in their care of the word, the
two things are at the same time at opposite poles in their essence. The
thinker utters Being. The poet names what is holy."
Philosophy and poetry do not differ merely in style and approach but
are seen as two enterprises "at opposite poles in their essence," even
though both projects require an identical comportment in the face of
Being-"care for the use of language"; "long guarded
speechlessness," etc. The thinker "utters Being," while the poet
"names what is holy." Is this then the difference?
The notion that the poet's function is to name the holy is taken
directly from H6lderlin. In "H6lderlin and the Essence of Poetry,"
Heidegger quotes directly from one of H6lderlin's unfinished poems:
"Much has man learnt. Many of the heavenly ones has he named."56
It is clear from the balance of the essay that the "naming" of the
"heavenly ones" stands for and comes to symbolize the naming of
other beings too, the naming, in short, of a world. We are told
specifically that "since language really became actual as conversation,
gods have acquired names and a world has appeared . . ." and
that ". . . it is precisely in the naming of the gods and in the
transmutation of the world into word, that the real conversation,
which we ourselves are, consists. "99 Later in the essay we read that "...
when the gods are named originally and the essence of things receives
a name, so that things for the first time shine out, human existence is
brought into a firm relation and given a basis."58 But surely, the naming
of the essence of things and the transmutation of the world into
word are just the sort of seminal linguistic events which issue from the
thinker who also names what is. Where then is the "abyss" which
separates them?
In Heidegger, Through Phenomenology to Thought, Fr.
Richardson too admits to difficulties in distinguishing Heidegger's ac-
5 Hull and Crick, p. 391.
56 "Hdlderlin and the Essence of Poetry," as translated by Douglas Scott in Existence
and Bezing,p. 300.
5' Scott, p. 303. Italics are mine.
58 Scott, p. 305.
HEIDEGGER AND THE MODES OF 235
WORLD-DISCLOSURE
count of poetry from his account of thinking. Fr. Richardson
speculates about the meaning of the passage we have cited in which
Heidegger sets the "uttering of Being" against the "naming of the
holy": ". . . in poetry, Being is uttered -but not as Being; in thought
Being is uttered as such .... ."5 If I understand this suggestion correctly,
the poet would "name" beings without understanding his project
as a deliberate and self-conscious effort to give an account of the
nature of Being and, in all likelihood, without a concept of the meaning
of Being at all. The philosophical thinker, on the other hand, no
matter how inadequate his understanding of the meaning of Being,
no matter the extent to which he has overlooked its "mystery," would
have, in spite of this, some explicit grasp of what Being means and a
distinct comprehension of his own project as an attempt to answer the
question about the nature and extent of what-there-is.
Fr. Richardson's suggestion has the merit of recognizing what we
feel intuitively to be one difference between most philosophers and
most poets, (though not of metaphysician-poets like Parmenides or
Lucretius) namely, that, while poets may disclose the nature of the
real, they do this most often with neither a formal nor a critical grasp
of the meaning of "real" and often in the course of trying to do
something else entirely. If the philosopher grasps Being explicitly and
the poet implicitly, then the distinction between these two activities
would lie in their respective intentions: the philosopher would intend
to do what the poet does unintentionally, or perhaps inadvertently.
Now this may very well be true, but are the two thereby sufficiently
distinguished? If I convey a certain meaning to you implicitly and
then I convey that meaning explicitly, it can be argued that I have
done the same thing only in a different way. If this is the only difference
we can make out between the uttering of Being but not as being
and the uttering of Being as such, it appears once again that we
have not found the "abyss" which is said to separate the two.60
What should be clear from this discussion is that although
Heidegger's later philosophy is more systematic than his detractors
allow, containing a doctrine of the vertical as well as the horizontal
Being-event, his development of the notion of a vertical Being-event
59 Richardson, p. 637.
6O.Perhaps, if Heidegger is right, the consequences of metaphysical disclosures
of Being in the West are fateful in a way those of poetry are not, leading as they are
said to lead, to a nihilistic and voracious subjectivism. If this is true and if we can
find no other salient differences between metaphysics and poetry, then a curious
view of poetry emerges, one quite incompatible with the high value Heidegger has
placed upon it: poetry is now seen to be a sort of shadow-disclosure, trailing along
after metaphysics and lacking any historical efficacy.
236 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
is flawed in several important ways. The doctrine of a vertical Beingevent
is beset by a variety of conceptual difficulties having to do with
the unity of the modes of disclosure and the criteria by which we
distinguish what is disclosivefrom what is not. Further, upon close inspection,
the five modes of disclosure which Heidegger mentions in
Holzwege collapse to only two, themselves difficult to separate from
one another. The whole notion of a vertical Being-event, however
grandiose, is too fragmentary and impressionistic to point the way
beyond this final epoch of metaphysics which Heidegger himself wished
so earnestly to surpass.
SANDRA LEE BARTKY.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO CIRCLE.