The primordial history (Urgeschichte) of a people, legend, is the most original saying of myth. It is the saying in which the mythic and pre-historical epoch of the existence of a people (die vorgeschichtliche Epoche   ihres Daseins) finds its expression. But if Benjamin underlines that it is legend which provides the raw material of tragedy, he does not   do so in order that tragedy be seen as a dramatisation of that material: as Umformung or as Ausgestaltung, transformation or configuration, tragedy is only mistakenly understood as legend in dramatic form. Legend provides the ‘new poetry’ of tragedy with its raw materials only to the extent that the latter is an essential taking of position with respect to that saying. By taking an essential position, tragedy turns legend in a new direction, repositions it in respect of its saying of the existence of a people. Such a position, Benjamin stresses, is not taken aimlessly. It is tendentious. It has a tendency. Not, however, a tendency in the sense of a tending toward something; the tendency harboured by the tragic turning of legend could only be described as a tending away. But away from what? Away from the saying of myth in legend. ‘Through every minor and yet unpredictably profound interpretation   of the material of legend,’ writes Benjamin, ‘tragedy brings about the destruction [Abbruch  ] of the mythic world-order, and prophetically shakes it with inconspicuous words [unscheinbaren Worten]’ (II 1:249). [Beistegui]

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In the case of Descartes  , the explication of the error is summarized in such a way that the direction is seen. The errare has turned out to be a deficere a detenninatione [deficiency in its determination]. In the case of errare, a breach occurs in the genuine determinacy of the voluntas to the perceptum. This deficere is deficere a libertate [to be deficient in this way is to be deficient in freedom]. The libertas, however, is what makes up the genuine being of a human being. Therefore, the deficere a detenninatione voluntatis is a deficere ab esse in the sense of the esse perceptum [to be deficient in the determination of the will is to be deficient in being in the sense of “being perceived”]. Insofar as it is a deficere ab esse perfectum [to be deficient in perfected being], this deficere is at the same time deficere ab esse creatum [to be deficient in created being] in such a way that the falsum is nothing other than a non esse of the ens creatum   [a nonbeing of the created being]. The esse creatum is the, fundamental determination in the explication of the errare and the being of libertas. To err is to effect a breach in [to be detrimental to: Abbruch-tun  ] the genuine being of the created human being. Insofar as the errare is an esse of the res cogitans  , the result is that, as the res cogitans  ’ esse, it is at the same time a non esse of the res cogitans qua creatum [a nonbeing of the thinking thing qua created]. We have, accordingly, a further determination of res cogitans’ being insofar as it is an esse creatum. Hitherto the determination was: the res cogitans is a being that can be grasped in a one-dimensional respect in the clara et distincta perceptio. Perceptum esse et creatum esse a Deo [to be perceived and to be created by God] are the fundamental determinations of the res cogitans’ esse. [GA17EN  ]

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Such renewal is a restoration of the meaningful relation to existence that has been eroded in the conceptual self-understanding and self-interpretation of factical life, a restoration whereby Dasein   is brought back to itself in a meaningful way. In the lecture course, Heidegger illustrates this with respect to six different contextual senses of the concept of history (Geschichte  ): (1) history as a science, as a theoretical domain (as in “she studies history, not law”); (2) history as the totality of what is past; (3) history as immanent tradition  , as the tradition that a particular people or culture may be said to have, tradition that continually renews itself as one is carried along by it; (4) history as something more detached, as something one can learn from, for example, in political life; (5) history in the sense in which we say, “This person   has a sad history”; and (6) history as the happening of significant events that I undergo in concrete, factical life and that relate to my worldly self or to the communal or environing world, history as happening that pertains to the “event-character” (Ereignischarakter) of factical life (GA 59  , 59). Heidegger then subjects these six different senses of history to phenomenological dejudication by examining the sense of enactment that the understanding of each implies, and with regard to the criterion formally indicated. Of these six, none in fact can be considered originary in the sense of the criterion indicated, for none contain the relational sense of a self-directed enactment that experiences the demand for renewal or restoration of existence. Notably, at this stage, Heidegger regards existence as something other than mere Dasein: “The human being can be there [da sein  ], have Dasein, without existing.” “Existence” is enacted only in the sharpening of factical significance or meaningfulness in the direction of the world of the self. And it should come as no surprise that only destruction itself fulfills the criterion for originary, self-directed restoration: “This mode of significance is that of an ongoing spur to Destruktion, directed toward the world of the self ” (GA 59, 82). Destruction entails the severance and abandonment (Abbruch) of preconceptions that block the access of existence to itself, the unseating (Absetzen) of those preconceptions that brings us “closer to what is originary.” Yet, Heidegger suggests, phenomenological destruction is not simply a method or way whereby we would ultimately arrive at what is originary or authentic once and for all, as though its task were to give us access to a pure origin: “Destruktion does not have the sense of arriving at what is authentic by way of its results. It itself and its facticity are what is authentic, i.e., the unseating that it entails” (GA 59, 184). Likewise, destruction is not some kind of reckoning with the tradition that would clear the way for Heidegger’s own philosophy. “I do not need any philosophy of my own,” as Heidegger states, “and therefore am not in search of one either” (GA 59, 191). [McNeill  ]

interrupção [GA12  ]