Haas: the question of the meaning of being

And it is this question (of the meaning of being) that is posed again, 25 years later in What is Called Thinking? But here, if ‘the most-in-need-of-thought, in our most-in-need-of-thought time, is that we are still not thinking [das Bedenklichste in unserer bedenklichen Zeit ist, daß wir noch nicht denken]’ (GA8, pp. 7-8), it is neither simply because of human neglect or indifference, lack of will or lack of means, nor merely because of stupidity or sloth; rather, it is just as much because the ‘thing-to-be-thought turns away from humans (zu-Denkende selbst sich von Menschen abwendet)’ (GA6T2, p. 397). It is not because we are too dumb but because we have not yet thought that we have not yet thought; we have not thought because that which is to be thought cannot be thought, or rather only thought as das Undenkbare, the unthinkable.¹ And this is the task that Heidegger sets for himself: not a science of being, but a thinking of being — a thinking of being as unthought, as it turns away from us. Then, if we too hope to think this being, we will have to unlearn our normal way of thinking in order to give up our scientific-technological habits — for ‘science itself does not think, and cannot think (die Wissenschaft ihrerseits nicht denkt und nicht denken kann)’ (GA8, p. 9) or ‘science does not think in the sense of the thinking of the thinker (die Wissenschaft denkt nicht im Sinne des Denkens der Denker)’ (GA8, p. 138). But this is how we must learn to think, if we are to think what calls for thinking, namely, being.

So, what is being? For Heidegger, it is the being of beings — not a being, but zuvor, prior (in essence, not simply in time) to beings; it is the origin of beings, that which allows them to be. And we humans, if we are like everything that is, we are related to being, ‘determined by being (vom Sein her bestimmt)’ (GA8, p. 13), although our species difference consists in our way of being open to being, called by it to always think it before, jeweils zuvor, all else, in everything, bei allem, that essentially is (GA8, pp. 96, 102). Which is why — to answer Leibniz’s question — there is something rather than nothing: because of being; being lets it be so. And it does so by giving being to beings, which is why being needs us — for as Kojeve writes (albeit with respect to Hegel): ‘Without Man, Being would be mute: it would (11) be there, but it would not be true.’² Or, to paraphrase Schelling: in us, being opens its eyes and first notices that it is.

But what does this say about being? How does being let beings be? For the being of beings is no answer to the question of the meaning of being; it far more indicates that the question remains. So, what is being? (HAAS, Andrew. “The Ambiguity of Being”, in Tziovanis Georgakis & Paul J. Ennis (ed.), Heidegger in the Twenty-First Century. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015, p. 10-11)

1. Heidegger cites Nietzsche: ‘Something un-fixed with respect to power, something un-dulant, is totally unthinkable for us (Etwas Un-festes von Kraft, etwas Un-dulatorisches ist uns ganz, undenkbar)’ (GA6T2, p. 286). Metaphysics is nihilism insofar as it throws up its hands and remains caught in resignation and passivity, immobility and indifference when faced with the unthinkable. See also (GA6T2, pp. 384, 397).[↩]
2. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. James H. Nichols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 188.[↩]