Being as Event and the Essence of Poetry in Later Heidegger’s Philosophy

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the concept of Being in later Heidegger’s philosophy with regard to its contexts in the study of poetry. The scrutiny, being guided by the recent interpretations, focuses on Heidegger’s turnabout that resulted in the renunciation of the metaphysical intuition of Being as some infinitely continuing state. The later Heidegger shifted from the task of understanding Being to considering it only as happening. The Being was since then construed as the emergent appropriating event (Ereignis), i. e., a break in familiarity with beings as a whole and at the same time the condition of the inception of a new familiarity or everydayness. According to Heidegger, this catastrophic and at the same time favorable, inceptive event does not exist permanently, but only unpredictably occurs sometimes. That is why the construal of Being as event implies in the first place the breakup of the shared senses of everydayness. However, Being gives us beings as a whole by appropriating sense to them and turning them into the familiar and accessible environment which is suitable for untroubled dwelling. The givenness of beings as a whole makes them “our own” and thereby ensures our identity and distinguishes us from the Other. Thus, Being as event, bringing the once-established identity into question, every time raise anew the problem of the Other. Accordingly, the essence of poetry that is for Heidegger mainly exemplified by F. Hölderlin’s poems is considered to be the ability to reveal Being in exactly the same way as it is inherent in the appropriating event. Heidegger therefore argues that poetry is essential for the formation of the national identity and the notion of the Other.