Erbe  , héritage, herança, heritage

A heritage consists of the traditional possibilities of existence that belong to a people or culture. The concept of heritage, introduced in §74 of Being and Time   (1927), indicates the essential traits of enduring, belonging, and dwelling as opposed to the uprootedness brought about by the abandonment of being and forgetfulness of being. But because the concept has been linked to his controversial engagement with National Socialism, the significance of heritage for Heidegger’s overall project of overcoming metaphysics has been overlooked. Yet heritage is central to Heidegger’s thinking on being and is integral to his conceptions of temporality (Zeitlichkeit  ) and historicity (Geschichtlichkeit  ). Against the more common meaning, Heidegger’s notion of heritage does not   signify a pre-given history characterized by an inescapable past passed down over generations to a particular group. Nor does heritage mark a simple or pure tie to a specific blood or soil, despite some prevailing views. Heidegger posits heritage as something that must be chosen and actively brought into being. Significantly, heritage arises from the future as much as it does from the past. It serves as the horizon   of authentic (eigentliches) possibilities understood within the temporal   structure of human existence.

The finitude of existence just seized upon tears one back out of the endless multiplicity of possibilities offering themselves nearest by- those of comfort, shirking and taking things easy — and brings Dasein   to the simplicity of its fate. This is how we designate the primordial occurrence of Dasein that lies in authentic resoluteness [Entschlossenheit  ] in which it hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility that it inherited yet has chosen. (SZ 384)

Indeed, heritage is at the center of Heidegger’s account of authentic human existence. It is because authentic existence shows itself in the manner of temporality and finitude that heritage may at all be chosen as a horizon of possibilities: “only a being that, as futural, is equiprimordially having-been” can be delivered over to its “inherited possibility” (SZ 385). Recognizing the centrality and specificity of temporality is how Dasein exists authentically as being “thrown” (Geworfen  ) into the world with others such that it may take up its inherited possibilities. Heidegger rejects the linear view of time wherein the past is something left behind as time moves forward along a continuum toward an open-ended future. For Heidegger what has been — the past, heritage, birth — is rather first given from the horizon of the future: “‘birth’ is taken into existence in coming back from the possibility of death (the possibility not-to-be-bypassed) so that existence may accept the thrownness of its own There more free from illusion  ” (SZ 391). This model of temporality remains with Heidegger throughout his writing. [CHL  ]

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VIDE: Erbe

héritage [ETEM]
heritage [BTJS]
legado [STJR]

NT: Heritage (Erbe), 383-386, 390-391. See also Hand   down; Retrieve; Tradition   [BTJS]

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A heritage consists of the traditional possibilities of existence that belong to a people or culture. The concept of heritage, introduced in §74 of Being and Time (1927), indicates the essential traits of enduring, belonging, and dwelling as opposed to the uprootedness brought about by the abandonment of being and forgetfulness of being. But because the concept has been linked to his controversial engagement with National Socialism, the significance of heritage for Heidegger’s overall project of overcoming metaphysics has been overlooked. Yet heritage is central to Heidegger’s thinking on being and is integral to his conceptions of temporality (Zeitlichkeit) and historicity (Geschichtlichkeit). Against the more common meaning, Heidegger’s notion of heritage does not signify a pre-given history characterized by an inescapable past passed down over generations to a particular group. Nor does heritage mark a simple or pure tie to a specific blood or soil, despite some prevailing views. Heidegger posits heritage as something that must be chosen and actively brought into being. Significantly, heritage arises from the future as much as it does from the past. It serves as the horizon of authentic (eigentliches) possibilities understood within the temporal structure of human existence. [Sharm N. Elkholy, WCHL]