Gathering is the power, enacted through and as language, which brings human beings, things, and natural objects into relation with one another. While authentic or poetic language gathers entities together in order to hold them in relation with one another, inauthentic language drives them apart. As a power enacted through speaking, gathering plays a central role in both Heidegger’s ontology and his philosophy of language. Since gathering is not primarily a creative power, but instead a power for cultivating, it does not cause things or human beings to come to be. Instead, gathering brings things, people, and the elements of natural growth into relation with one another as a force that arranges, conjoins, and gleans in order to keep safe that which is gathered together.

“Gathering” translates the German verb sammeln, to gather, to collect, to accumulate, to harvest, to glean. Heidegger employs both the verb and the substantivized infinitive form Sammeln, the active participle sammelnd, as well as the substantivized participial form das Sammelnde, that which gathers, collects, or gleans. In the associative and creative style of writing that he develops from the 1930s onward, Heidegger also associates gathering with related cognates such as einsammeln, to collect or pick up, versammeln, to assemble or congregate, and Sammlung, a collection, assembly, or accumulation. Any particular use of “gathering” often resonates with traces of a number of these meanings. (CHL)