Draft of a section of a paper on the anarcheology of forests:
The
endeavor Heidegger called history of beyng
(Geschichte des
Seyns)
is at the same time cosmic – and, to a large extent,
cosmopolitical
–
and archeological – and, if it is so, it
is an-archeological.
Throughout his contact with the archives
of Nietzsche
in the mid-1930s, he became persuaded that the metaphysical
forgetfulness of being and the corresponding ontological difference
between being and beings
were a consequence of an arché
–
a beginning, an Anfang
– which is itself to be exorcized.
That
initial move placed physis
–
the nature of processes but also the way things unfold by themselves,
of their own forces and their own accord –
at
the center of the effort to think the world through. That
starting point paved the way to the bias of thought towards control
expressed in the endeavor of extracting the intelligibility of what
it finds around. It
is perhaps not clear, or not relevant, whether this course of
developments was doomed from the outset or was rather tainted by the
metaphysics it generated and maintained. Perhaps
another route could have been taken at
some juncture
in
the
road. In
any case, the beginning ushered in by physis
– and by an associate notion of truth as aletheia,
unveiling
– grounded an era that hosts
the metaphysical efforts to ensure things are separated from their
intelligibility.
The
inception carried that development even if it could be avoided or
postponed. Heidegger
was persuaded that this
first beginning was desertified
into a project that makes thinking into an effort to secure an
ever-extending surrounding that is both calculable and commandable.
This
beginning was the inception of a relation between thought and all the
rest – or rather, between thought and what it is about. The
enterprise of making everything understandable and controllable was
born
in the inception ushered in by physis
and that project had all sorts of consequences, for things that were
turned into objects (of
thought and of standing reserve),
for the world which is turn into a controlled ensemble of positions
or a functioning
device (Ge-Stell)
and for physis
itself which is ultimately turned into an instance of a disconnected
and multiply realizable intelligibility.
The
coming of this first
inception
– its arrival and the subsequent consequences issued from it – is
itself an event, an Ereignis
and therefore comes from a more primordial source. This
is a source that is behind the grounding that physis
offered. Physis,
as a first beginning, is followed
by the history of metaphysics and is itself issued
from this
second and
yet
more primordial source
that nonetheless is not a ground of grounds – or an arché
of the archai
– but rather an absence of ground that Heidegger calls Ab-grund
(abyss, or un-ground, de-ground).
That the era commanded by and commenced with
physis was
itself an event grounded nowhere but in a sheer arrival exemplifies
the more original character of the second beginning which comes from
beyng – the more ancient being that is not unveiling but rather the
very clearing (Lichtung)
that enables any appearing.
Clearing
is not a revelation of the underlying intelligibility, it
is not what
makes something seizable or understandable for
it is not a
presentation from
which an
intelligibility
can be detached,
as is aletheia,
but rather a mere taking-place. Heidegger
understands that the truth behind truth as unveiling is a mere
showing, a presentation as what happens when light arrives in the
forest in a clearing. In contrast, he considers that aletheia
was transformed into revelation (for
someone) as physis
was degenerated into
commands
and calculation; truth
was turned into adequacy, adequaetio
intellectus et
rei.
Aletheia
was turned into a certainty as physis
was turned into thesis.
Clearing,
in contrast, holds that truth lies in the unfolding of things and not
in what is unveiled of them for
someone,
for a truth-bearer.
Truth-as-clearing escapes
physis
because
it precedes it while
grounding
nothing; truth-as-clearing
is indeed
nothing but the
opening that makes anything appear or arrive. Beyng is the abyss of
the event that unveils no hidden intelligibility. It
lies in the very question that could be phrased in terms of a quest
for intelligibility but offers
no foundational
answer.
The
history of beyng heads towards what is most primordial as it reveals
events that are of a cosmic nature such as the pursuit of
metaphysics. It
is a history
which
brings
about more original beginnings – it is not a history of what
follows (from) an
arché,
it is not a history of sequences or consequences. Rather, it is a
history of starting points that could be more primordial while
coming
later.
Because we are often attentive only to what follows from what, we
cannot see such a history taking place in a time of arrivals. It is
disturbing for our sense of intelligibility because first things not
always come first; further, it is not a history of thought separated
from its effects and not a history of what there is irrespective to
thinking. The history of beyng
is partly about the effects of thinking – and calculation,
machination, treasuring Ge-Stell
– over the world and the effect of what the world then triggers on
thinking. The advent of metaphysics brings to the fore a history that
cannot itself be thought through by metaphysics itself
– from a metaphysical point of view, nothing takes place either
with being or with anything more primordial than it. From that
perspective, beyng
could have no history for it is what can barely
be conceived among beings. Metaphysics, remarks Heidegger, is
incapable
both of farewells and of beginnings,
and beyng
is essentially beginning
– and hence a farewell.
But the history unveiled by the occurrence of metaphysics brings
about the daring character of an arché,
which is ultimately stepping backwards towards a non-grounded pure
beginning.
The cosmic character of the history of beyng
lies in the distance it keeps with the chronology of what follows
what (Heidegger’s Historie);
it is a history of beginnings that engages thought as it revolves
around the moment of grounding. Thinking that is not following the
consequences, is proceeding backwards towards what can precede but
has no power to command an arché.
A thought that can entertain what could be the second beginning –
Ereignis
– is a thought which
unearthens
the soil where thought could rest in the age of metaphysics. The
possibility of this unearthing thought is the possibility of a
history that does more than capturing the intelligibility of time –
a history that faces up to the non-grounded
in time. Thinking beyond the coupling of being and thought (and of
time and history) that makes grounding possible is anarchaeological.
Revolving the ground is
dwelling in what is not in itself capable to ground; Heidegger finds
the second beginning in the incapacity to have power, in the very
indifference to power.
Further, that ungrouding an-arché can be appropriated by what
can ground power and by what can dominate the very effects that veil
beyng; this is because physis is itself an arrival. The ground
still rests on what is underneath, even though it cannot ground
anything. This is the sense of the indifference of beyng to power:
beyng can be appropriated by physis while letting it
happen and the abyss under the ground can be kept unnoticed. The
(an-)archaeology of beyng under the ground depends on the
excavating effort facing the thinker – which is, at the face of it,
for Heidegger, the human. Beyng is therefore dependent on the human;
such state is tolerated by beyng which is not craving to be
unveiled and concedes to the human the freedom to think it through, a
freedom grounded in reference to being.
What uncovers the abyss inside the ground is the detection, mainly
carried out by Nietzsche according to Heidegger, of nihilism as an
event in the underground history – an Ereignis. The
discovery of thesis arising within physis is the
thought that enables the unveiling of a different beginning.
It is this urge for a second
beginning that appeals to the non-grounded that disconnects thought
and being and that makes history alien to the chain of historical
consequences. Being, what is connected to physis in the first
beginning, harbors beyng inside it as any attempt to ground anything
carries the gap of a primordial event. When that gap between the
destiny of physis, now unfolded – call it thesis, or
Ge-Stell, or Wille zu Macht – and beyng that
dispenses that destination is thought, a new beginning is made
possible. That an-archaeology cannot be a product of a decision –
that will place the gesture within metaphysics which is the forced
exposure of what was previously presenting itself of its own accord.
But neither can it come as an imposition of beyng over humans
for it is the former who depends on the latter. Heidegger insists
that thinking is a state of readiness, neither forcing a beginning
nor accepting it as independent of listening to the word –
independent of thinking.
This readiness to what is unveiled that involves no act of excavating
– this an-archeological state – is prompted by questioning;
asking is what spells the future of beyng.
The question is in the neighborhood of Ereignis, unbearably
near and yet seemingly far – die abgrundige Ferne des Nahen.
The question concerning fire – the physis of inflammability
– triggers the Promethean control but within it there is a
question; a question about the events that give rise to phaos
– which says the same as physis in its multiplicity.
The dawn of the destiny of beyng (Seynsgeschickes) concealed
Ge-Stell and machination in its inception
– that destination was in the question that carries in itself a
kinship with the force that brings Ereignis about. The
ungrounded ungrounding is like the question – indifferent to power
and yet dependent on the thinker which is compelled to entertain it.
The twist of the movement can
be described as a step from beginning with an arché, a
ground, an intelligibility that can be detached from what it makes
intelligible towards seeking a corresponding an-arché which
is the very question that made the ground possible and the extracted
intelligibility intelligible. A move from a ground to an abyss, from
a commandment to an emission, from a departure to an outset. Ereignis
is hidden in physis, beyng is packed inside being –
archaeology is wrapped around an-archaeology. Thinking beyond the
first beginning is thinking about what came before the beginning; it
is the inception of the inception, the first gesture of a grounding.
Beyng, therefore, lies in lack of ground underneath the arché
– it has no answer and cannot be measured.
Heidegger takes beyng to be akin to the questionability of all
decisions
– this indicates why Ereignis is also Austrag, the
resolution.
The move from the first beginning to its consequences and then
backwards towards the second beginning correspond to a movement
through three fundamental tonalities (Grundstimmungen): from
wonder to weirdness to the abyss.
Wonder triggers a quest for reasons and that quest makes whatever is
recalcitrant weird, strange, unfamiliar; instead, what precedes
wonder is the astonishment that is not a question concerning what is
before the thinker, but an immersion in the very questioning of any
resolution taken. The abyss lies within the pre-foundational stage,
among the an-archai, it lies in the pre-history of any resolution;
an-archic is the question concerning the resolution which is going to
be unfolded. The abyss belongs in the resolution and in Ereignis.
It also belongs in the an-arché (Ab-Grund), in the
absence of foundation that every ground is wrapped around.
The Ereignis of
nihilism is taken by Heidegger to be something both cosmological and
an-archeological. There cannot be a physis of nihilism – or
of Ge-Stell – because that will do no more than carrying on
the very project of nihilism and the event, with the resolution that
brings it about, would not be considered. To face the event of
nihilism, one needs to see it as ungrounded, as an-archeological. But
by the same token, that harbors a cosmological import: all things are
not subject to the long assassination of God because there is a major
event presiding the history of metaphysics which is the assassination
itself. Nihilism is not all that there could be about the cosmos –
neither is metaphysics the only project of intelligence to cope with
it. Seeing the event of metaphysics as a cosmic Ereignis –
one for which there cannot be an arché within the realm of
physis – opens the view to something else that could
underlie the (cosmopolitical) relation between thought and being.
Heidegger claims that the history of metaphysics unveils beyng
precisely because it unveils a history that includes an an-archic
preamble that overshadows anything else. If the history of
metaphysics is considered under the light of the event it unfolds, it
can open a path towards a history of beyng where the absence of
ground is the protagonist. It is in the origin of metaphysical
thinking that lies the resolution that determines the course of its
development and within any determination there is an underlying
abyss.