Heidegger and the gift

Marion works from both Husserl and Heidegger, and we’ll focus on the latter, as he is slightly easier to grasp. (I am summarizing Robyn Horner’s discussion.) Heidegger begins from Husserl, but seeks to go beyond him. Husserl’s phenomenology was an effort, Heidegger says, to “let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” But that leaves the question open, what is it that phenomenology wants to “let us see”? The answer is that phenomenology does not direct attention to beings, but to being itself, the being that accompanies objects and beings. Phenomenology, Heidegger says shows “something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and ground.” Beyond Husserl, Heidegger wants phenomenology to move from the ontic realm (the realm of beings) to the ontological realm (the realm of being itself).

Husserl’s failure to go ontological, Heidegger says, arises from his dependence on Descartes, who sees being as what is present at hand, what is substantial, what is persistent in the changes that a thing undergoes: “entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence,’” and for Heidegger this means that these entities “are understood with regard to a definite model of time – the ‘Present.’”

Heidegger wants to reverse the relationship between being and thought. So long as one operates at the ontic level, the understanding subject has the initiative. But being is what is given, and what is given calls the subject, Dasein, to thought. Being itself is not available like beings; it shows itself with beings but only in its withdrawal. It is the ground of all beings but is itself groundless.

Heidegger meditates on this theme by considering the German phrase es gibt – “there is” or, literally, “it gives.” In Basic Problems in Phenomenology, he writes, “Perhaps there is no other being beyond what has been enumerated, but perhaps, as in the German idiom for ‘there is,’ es gibt, still something else is given. Even more. In the end something is given which must be given if we are to be able to make beings accessible to us as beings and comport ourselves toward them, something which, to be sure, is not but which must be given if we are to experience and understand any beings at all.”

But what is the “it” that is given? Heidegger gives a number of different answers to this question. In Being and Time, he suggests that being is given by time. As Horner puts it, “being only becomes luminous in the concrete finitude of Dasein, and so is given according to the horizon of ecstatic temporality that is Dasein’s way of being. A horizon is not an agent: time does not give being in the sense that it creates it, but is rather a condition of possibility for Dasein’s transcendence toward it.”

But in his “Letter on Humanism,” he suggests that being gives itself. He distinguishes his understanding of this from both ancient Greek and scholastic conceptions of being’s self-gift, which, he argues, model being’s giving on the ontic realm of beings: “It will be manifest that the ancient way of interpreting the Being of entities is oriented towards the ‘world’ or ‘Nature’ in the widest sense, and that it is indeed in terms of ‘time’ that its understanding of Being is obtained. The outward evidence of this . . . is the treatment of the meaning of Being as parousia or ousia, which signifies, in ontologico-Temporal terms, ‘presence.’ Entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence’; this means that they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time – the ‘Present.’”

In contrast, Heidegger maintains the ontological distinction by insisting that being never comes into our grasp, but always presents itself in its withdrawal. Horner again: “Being ‘lights up’ beings without becoming a being, since being ‘is’ not, it ‘is’ no-thing. In this sense, being is horizontal. ‘Being comes to destiny in that It, Being, gives itself. But thought in terms of such destiny this says: it gives itself and refuses itself simultaneously.’ In answer, then, to the question about what it means that being gives itself, we could suggest that being gives itself as withdrawal . . . .: ‘In hailing the thinker into Being, Being imparts itself to him as gift, and this gift is what constitutes the essence of the thinker, the endowment by which he is.’”

Finally, in a 1962 lecture Time and Being, Heidegger introduces the concept of Ereignis, “appropriation” or “the event of appropriation.” This “event” is not an “occurrence, but that which makes an occurrence possible.” On this reading, Horner says, “transcendent being is most clearly situated in its immanence. There is no ‘being’ somehow ‘beyond’ the world, but only being given in the mode of withdrawal, in the even of appropriation. Being ‘is’ transcendent, but it is not a transcendent being.” Ereignis is “the extending and sending which opens and preserves,” the “extending and sending of being.” It is not an event in the usual sense; but it has the character of being like an event in its immediacy, its quality of occurrence and withdrawal.

If being is that which is given, es gibt, in any of these senses, then, Heidegger concludes thought is properly a thankful response to that givenness. Heidegger says, “To the most thought-provoking, we devote our thinking of what is to-be-thought. But this devoted thinking is not something that we ourselves produce and bring-along, to repay gift with gift. When we think what is most thought-provoking, we then give thought to what this most thought-provoking matter itself gives us to think about. This thinking which recalls, and which qua thinking alone is true thanks, does not need to repay, nor be deserved, in order to give thanks. Such thanks is not a recompense; but it remains an offering; and only by this offering so we allow that which properly gives food for thought to remain what it is in its essential nature. Thus we give thanks for our thinking in a sense that is almost lost in our language . . . . When the transaction of a matter is settled, or disposed of, we say in Alemannic dialect that it is ‘thanked.’ Disposing does not mean here sending off, but the reverse: it means to bring the matter forth and leave it where it belongs. This sort of disposing is called thanking.”

Elsewhere, he adds, “What gives us food for thought fever and again is the most thought-provoking. We take the gift it gives by giving thought to what is most thought-provoking. In doing so, we keep thinking what is most thought-provoking. We recall it in thought. Thus we recall in thought that to which we give thanks for the endowment of our nature – thinking. As we give thought to what is most thought-provoking, we give thanks.”

William Richardson explains, “Once we see that the original German word for thought (Gedanc) suggests re-cord, it is not difficult to understand in which sense it also implies thanks-giving (Danken). Being’s supreme gift to the thinker is the very Being by which he is a thinker: ek-sistence. Does it not warrant acknowledgement on mans’ part? Such an acknowledgement in its purity, however, is not in the first place a requiting of this gift with another gift. On the contrary, the purest form of acknowledgement is simply the accepting of the gift, sc. Assuming it, acquiescing in it, yielding to its demands. Acceptance, then, is the most original form of thanks. Now when There-being accepts the endowment by which thinking comes about, sc. Ek-sistence, it accepts the gift of thought as such. For There-being to accept thought as thought is to do what lies within its power to accomplish thought. This is by that very fact the fulfillment of thinking. Thinking thus conceived in the moment of fulfillment is clearly thanks-giving.”