Bret Davis (2007:9Nota) – Aneignung

One might also use the expression “ecstatic-appropriation” to characterize this double-sided character of the will. But this would lead to confusion insofar as the word “appropriation” is used to translate what for Heidegger is fundamentally other than the will, what for him would be precisely a matter of non-willing: the appropriating-event of Ereignis. While Heidegger’s Ereignis would refer to an a-propriating that would bring that which is appropriated into its own most proper (i.e., appropriate) essence, that is, would let it be, willful appropriation — which would generally be translated into German as Aneignung — is a matter of forcefully assimilating an other into the domain of one’s own rule. That being said, one might nevertheless remain suspicious, as Derrida   does, of whether Heidegger’s Ereignis is free from all traces of a willful Aneignung, and of whether his event of appropriation in the end leaves room for letting the otherness of the Other be. (The theme of Versammlung in Heidegger’s thought is a reoccurring site of critical questioning in Derrida  ’s “Geschlecht” series of essays as well as in his Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989].) I shall attempt to explicate and interpret Heidegger’s intimations of a non-willing sense of Ereignis in chapter 8, before addressing in chapter 9 certain residues of a “will to unity” that remain in his later thought.