(…) “onde a filosofia levou sua matéria a um saber absoluto (Hegel) e a uma evidência finalmente válida (Husserl)”, podemos ficar atentos a algo que se oculta, algo que já não pode ser matéria a pensar da filosofia (GA14, 79).
A este impensado da filosofia Heidegger dá o nome de clareira (Lichtung), como a abertura através da qual o curso tanto do pensamento especulativo como da intuição originária têm de passar para se realizarem como um trazer à presença. A abertura da clareira permite primeiro a passagem do pensamento à presença, permite primeiro o possível deixar aparecer algo. É a abertura dentro da qual o jogo de luz e escuridão pode ocorrer pela primeira vez, uma abertura “para tudo o que vem à presença ou à ausência” (GA14, 81). A clareira é aquilo a que Heidegger, recorrendo a uma palavra de Goethe, chama um Urphänomen, um fenômeno primordial, um Ur-sache, uma matéria primordial — a matéria primordial para o pensamento. Heidegger cita a diretiva de Goethe: “Não procure nada por detrás dos fenômenos: eles próprios são o que deve ser aprendido”, acrescentando que, no presente contexto, isto significa que a clareira é o próprio fenômeno, aquilo que deve tornar-se questionável para o nosso pensamento.
O que aqui é pensado como a clareira que primeiro concede o aparecimento de algo, numa concessão que é ela própria o deixar aparecer e deixar brilhar (Scheinenlassen: GA14, 71), não é, de fato, outra coisa senão a clareira que em Ser e Tempo foi identificada com Dasein, como a revelação que primeiro clarificou e deixou acontecer o ser dos entes em geral no Aí. No entanto, esta clareira está agora a ser pensada de forma algo diferente. Enquanto em Ser e Tempo se dizia que o acontecimento da clareira era possibilitado pela temporalidade ekstática e, em particular, pela unicidade do horizonte aberto da temporalidade que dava origem à transcendência do mundo — um horizonte cuja própria abertura se tornou cada vez mais questionável nos cursos subsequentes, como vimos -, a desobstrução é agora pensada já não em termos horizonais-transcendentais, nem mesmo em termos de diferença ontológica. Na aula de 1964, pelo contrário, o pensamento é agora convidado a colocar a questão de saber “se a clareira, a livre abertura, não será aquilo em que só o espaço puro e o tempo ekstático e tudo o que neles se torna presença e ausência têm primeiro o lugar que reúne e abriga tudo” (GA 14, 81). A clareira não é em si mesma algo presente, mas aquilo dentro do qual a vinda à presença pode ocorrer primeiro, aquilo que abre caminho para essa vinda à presença. Não é um fenômeno estático, mas um acontecimento, um evento que permite chegar à presença e entrar na ausência. Em vez do horizonte unitário e ekstático de uma transcendência fundada na diferença ontológica, encontramos o acontecimento de um “ajuntamento” que permite que as coisas cheguem à presença — permite que a fenomenalidade ocorra na reunião dos seres numa única presença — mas também, nesse mesmo ajuntamento, “abriga” e preserva os fenômenos na sua própria presença e ausência. A clareira prevalece, “mantém o controle” (waltet).
Heidegger’s lecture, by contrast, seeks to raise “the critical question,” the question concerning what the matter of thinking is—a matter that is no longer the matter of philosophy, where philosophy is conceived as metaphysics. Philosophy as metaphysics “thinks beings as beings in the manner of a representational thinking that gives grounds.” It represents beings with respect to their Being as ground, a ground that is understood as presence (GA 14, 69–70). In the philosophy of modernity, the era philosophically instituted by Descartes, that ground is presupposed and experienced as the subjectivity of consciousness. Philosophy understands itself as accomplishing the task of bringing that ground itself to self-consciousness, in the certainty of scientific self-knowledge, whether in Hegel’s absolute knowing or Husserl’s ultimately valid evidence. Yet is there, Heidegger now asks, perhaps something that remains unthought within the call “to the matter itself ” in modern philosophy? Precisely here, he suggests, “where philosophy has brought its matter into absolute knowing and to ultimately valid evidence,” we may become attentive to something that conceals itself, something that it can no longer be the matter of philosophy to think (GA 14, 79).
This unthought of philosophy Heidegger names the clearing (Lichtung), as the openness through which the course of both speculative thinking and originary intuition must pass in order to accomplish themselves as a bringing to presence. The openness of the clearing first grants the passage of thought to presence, first enables the possible letting appear of something. It is the openness within which the play of light and dark can first occur, an openness “for all that comes to presence or absence” (GA 14, 81). The clearing is what Heidegger, appealing to a word of Goethe’s, calls an Urphänomen, a primal phenomenon, an Ur-sache, a primal matter—the primordial matter for thought. He cites Goethe’s directive, “Look for nothing behind phenomena: they themselves are what is to be learned,” adding that in the present context this means that the clearing is the phenomenon itself, that which must become questionable for our thinking.
What is here thought as the clearing that first grants the appearing of something, in a granting that is itself the letting of letting appear and letting shine (Scheinenlassen: GA 14, 71) is indeed nothing other than the clearing that in Being and Time was identified with Dasein, as the disclosedness that first cleared and let happen the Being of beings in general in the There.3 Yet this clearing is now being thought somewhat differently. Whereas in Being and Time the happening of the clearing was said to be enabled by ekstatic temporality,4 and in particular by the unitary open horizon of temporality that gave rise to the transcendence of world—a horizon whose very openness became increasingly questionable in the subsequent lecture courses, as we have seen—the clearing is now thought no longer in horizonal-transcendental terms, nor indeed in terms of the ontological difference. In the 1964 lecture, by contrast, thinking is now invited to ask the question of “whether the clearing, free openness, may not be that within which alone pure space and ekstatic time and all that comes to presence and absence within them first have the locale that gathers and shelters everything” (GA 14, 81). The clearing is itself not something present, but that within which coming to presence can first occur, that which makes way for such coming to presence. It is not a static phenomenon, but a happening, an event that grants coming to presence and entering absence. In place of the unitary, ekstatic horizon of a transcendence founded on the ontological difference, we find the happening of a “gathering” that lets things come to presence—lets phenomenality occur in the coming together of beings into one presence—yet also, in this very gathering, “shelters” and preserves phenomena in their very presencing and absencing. The clearing prevails, “holds sway” (waltet).
When Heidegger says that this clearing “holds sway within Being, within presence” (GA 14, 83), this cannot, therefore, mean: as something present, but must be understood in the sense of holding sway at the very heart of presence and of all coming to presence, of phenomenality itself. Although it remains unthought within philosophy, it is, Heidegger suggests, spoken of in philosophy’s beginning, in the poem of Parmenides. Parmenides hears the following address (Fragment I, lines 28ff.):
. . . χρεὼ δέ σε πάντα πυθέσθαι
ἠμὲν Ἀληθείης εὐκυκλέος ἀτρεμὲς ἦτορ
ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας, ταῖς οὐκ ἔνι πίστις ἀληθής.
Heidegger translates:
. . . you, however, are to experience everything:
Both the untrembling heart of unconcealment,
Well-rounded,
And the opining of mortals,
Lacking the ability to trust in what is unconcealed. (GA 14, 83)
The untrembling heart of unconcealment means, Heidegger elucidates, unconcealment itself in what is most its own. It means “the place of stillness” that “gathers within itself that which first grants unconcealment,” namely, the clearing, in which “the possible shining or radiance, the possible coming to presence of presence itself resides” (GA 14, 83–84).5 What first grants unconcealment before all else, he adds, is a path: “the path upon which thinking pursues and perceives one thing: ὅ πως ἔ στιν . . . ε ἶ ναι: that presencing presences [daß anwest Anwesen]. The clearing grants, before all else, the possibility of the path to presence (des Weges zur Anwesenheit) and grants the possible presencing of such presence itself ” (GA 14, 84).
That presencing itself presences, that presencing itself comes to presence, seems to verge on tautology. And perhaps it is. Yet what Heidegger’s locution, echoing Parmenides, here seeks to articulate is that presencing is not a static phenomenon of the givenness of that which is present (beings themselves), but is itself a happening, a coming to presence, a “path to presence,” an emergence. Emergence from what or from where? Asking why it is that the ekstatic sojourn of human beings within the openness of presencing is turned “only toward that which is present and the presentation of what is present,” overlooking presence as such and especially the clearing that grants it, Heidegger then notes the following:
This (the clearing itself and what it is as such) remains concealed. Does that happen by chance? Does it happen only as a consequence of the carelessness of human thinking? Or does it happen because self-concealing, concealment, Λήθη, belongs to Ἀ-Λήθεια, not as a mere addition, not as shadow to light, but rather as the heart of Ἀλήθεια? And does there indeed hold sway within this self-concealing of the clearing of presence a further sheltering and preserving, from which unconcealment can first be granted and what is present thus appear in its presence?
If this were so, then the clearing would not be the mere clearing of presence, but rather the clearing of self-concealing presence, the clearing of self-concealing sheltering. (GA 14, 88)
This condensed passage calls for a careful reading. There is, Heidegger is suggesting, in fact a double concealment at work in the happening of the clearing of presence, the presencing of presence. There is, first, the self-concealing of presence and of the clearing of presence, such that humans fail to heed that clearing of presence as clearing, turned as they are toward that which is present in its presence and givenness, in its presentation (Gegenwärtigung), that is, toward beings themselves. Yet within this happening of concealment—not over and beyond it, but within it, at and as its very heart—there lies a further operation or accomplishment of self-concealing, a gift, as Heidegger will elsewhere describe it, whereby concealment conceals not only presence and its clearing, but conceals itself as such.6 It conceals itself in sheltering and preserving itself, concealment, as that from which the path to presence is granted, that from which all presence first emerges, first comes to presence. Concealment, self-concealment (Sichverbergen) is, at heart, also a sheltering (Bergen). The final sentence in the excerpt just cited contains, not a repetition of the same point, but an articulation of this double concealment: first, “the clearing of self-concealing presence” (Lichtung der sich verbergenden Anwesenheit); and then, “the clearing of self-concealing sheltering” (Lichtung des sich verbergenden Bergens). The task of thinking at the end of philosophy entails that we experience Ἀ λήθεια in a Greek manner as unconcealment, and then, “over beyond the Greek,” think it as the clearing of self-concealing (GA 14, 88).