Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy 9781442697720

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations: Selected Works by Martin Heidegger
Editors’ Introduction
PART ONE. Thinking Earth
1. Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection
2. Heidegger and Ecology
3. Earth-Thinking and Transformation
4. Singing the Earth
5. Call of the Earth: Endowment and (Delayed) Response
PART TWO. Animals and the World
6. The Word’s Silent Spring: Heidegger and Herder on Animality and the Origin of Language
7. Environmental Management in the ‘Age of the World Picture’
8. Humanity as Shepherd of Being: Heidegger’s Philosophy and the Animal Other
PART THREE. Poēsis and Dwelling
9. The Path of a Thinking, Poeticizing Building: The Strange Uncanniness of Human Being on Earth
10. There Where Nothing Happens: The Poetry of Space in Heidegger and Arellano
11. Meeting Place
12. Eating Ereignis, or: Conversation on a Suburban Lawn
13. Down-to-Earth Mystery
Selected Works
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

HEIDEGGER AND THE EARTH: ESSAYS IN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Second, Expanded Edition

New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics Kenneth Maly, General Editor New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics aims to open up new approaches to classical issues in phenomenology and hermeneutics. Thus its intentions are the following: to further the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger – as well as that of Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Emmanuel Levinas; to enhance phenomenological thinking today by means of insightful interpretations of texts in phenomenology as they inform current issues in philosophical study; to inquire into the role of interpretation in phenomenological thinking: to take seriously Husserl’s term phenomenology as ‘a science which is intended to supply the basic instrument for a rigorously scientific philosophy and, in its consequent application, to make possible a methodical reform of all the sciences’; to take up Heidegger’s claim that ‘what is own to phenomenology, as a philosophical “direction,” does not rest in being real. Higher than reality stands possibility. Understanding phenomenology consists solely in grasping it as possibility’; and to practise phenomenology as ‘underway,’ as ‘the praxis of the self-showing of the matter for thinking,’ as ‘entering into the movement of enactment-thinking.’ The commitment of this book series is also to provide English translations of significant works from other languages. In summary, New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics intends to provide a forum for a full and fresh thinking and rethinking of the way of phenomenology and interpretive phenomenology, that is, hermeneutics. For a list of books published in the series, see page 269.

EDITED BY LADELLE MCWHORTER AND GAIL STENSTAD

Heidegger and the Earth Essays in Environmental Philosophy Second, Expanded Edition

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2009 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9988-4

Printed on acid-free and 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Heidegger and the Earth : essays in environmental philosophy / edited by Ladelle McWhorter and Gail Stenstad. – 2nd expanded ed. (New studies in phenomenology and hermeneutics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9988-4 I. McWhorter, Ladelle, 1960– II. Stenstad, Gail III. Series: New studies in phenomenology and hermeneutics (Toronto, Ont.) B3279.H49H44 2009

C813c.6

C2009-900652-9

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Abbreviations: Selected Works by Martin Heidegger

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Editors’ Introduction ix ladelle m c whorter and gail stenstad PART ONE: THINKING EARTH 1 Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection 5 ladelle m c whorter 2 Heidegger and Ecology hanspeter padrutt

17

3 Earth-Thinking and Transformation kenneth maly 4 Singing the Earth gail stenstad

45

62

5 Call of the Earth: Endowment and (Delayed) Response 70 robert mugerauer PART TWO: ANIMALS AND THE WORLD 6 The Word’s Silent Spring: Heidegger and Herder on Animality and the Origin of Language 103 tom greaves

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Contents

7 Environmental Management in the ‘Age of the World Picture’ 123 dennis skocz 8 Humanity as Shepherd of Being: Heidegger’s Philosophy and the Animal Other 144 donald turner PART THREE: PO8SIS AND DWELLING 9 The Path of a Thinking, Poeticizing Building: The Strange Uncanniness of Human Being on Earth 169 steven davis 10 There Where Nothing Happens: The Poetry of Space in Heidegger and Arellano 186 remmon e. barbaza 11 Meeting Place 201 thomas davis 12 Eating Ereignis, or: Conversation on a Suburban Lawn 215 ladelle mcwhorter and gail stenstad 13 Down-to-Earth Mystery gail stenstad

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Selected Works by Martin Heidegger Contributors Index

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255

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Abbreviations: Selected Works by Martin Heidegger

BW BT-M BT-S CP DT EGT EL

EM F FC GA 2 GA 5 GA 7 GA 9 GA 12 GA 13 GA 16 GA 29 GA 39 GA 54 GA 65 H ID IM

Basic Writings Being and Time (Macquarrie and Robinson trans.) Being and Time (Stambaugh trans.) Contributions to Philosophy (from Enowning) Discourse on Thinking Early Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Philosophy On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word, Concerning Herder’s Treatise ‘On the Origin of Language’ Einführung in die Metaphysik Der Feldweg Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics Sein und Zeit. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2 Holzwege. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5 Vorträge und Aufsätze. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 7 Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9 Unterwegs zur Sprache. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 12 Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. Gesamtuasgabe, vol. 13 Reden und Andere Zeugnisse Eines Lebenswebes Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Gesamtausgabe, vols. 29/30 Hölderlin’s Hymnen ‘Germanien’ und ‘Der Rhein,’ Gesamtausgabe, vol. 39 Parmenides Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65 Holzwege Identity and Difference An Introduction to Metaphysics

viii Abbreviations

N1 P PLT PR QT S SD SG SZ TB TK UK US VA WCT WHD WL WP ZS

Nietzsche, vol. 1 Pathmarks Poetry, Language, Thought The Principle of Reason The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays Seminare Zur Sache des Denkens Der Satz vom Grund Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. Time and Being Die Technik und die Kehre Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes Unterwegs zur Sprache Vorträge und Aufsätze What Is Called Thinking? Was Heißt Denken? On the Way to Language Was Ist Das – Die Philosophie? Zollikoner Seminare

Editors’ Introduction ladelle m c whorter and gail stenstad

Paradox is the titillating Other of all logics rooted in the law of noncontradiction. It is Other because it cannot be assimilated; it is titillating because it is transgressive. Most of us enjoy an occasional encounter with paradox the way we enjoy a good joke – rarely, however, do we take paradoxes seriously. Indeed, our enjoyment depends on our thinking’s maintaining itself within the logic of non-contradiction and on our viewing the paradoxical from that perspective instead of immersing ourselves in the paradoxical on its own terms. Yet when we think with Heidegger – and especially when that thinking concerns itself with what we might loosely refer to as ecology – we find ourselves called on to think with and within the paradoxical – or, at least, what appears to be paradoxical from the perspective of the logic of non-contradiction. When we attempt to think ecological concerns within the field of thinking opened for us by Martin Heidegger, the paradoxical unfolds at the site of the question of human action. Thinking ecologically – that is, thinking the earth in our time – means thinking death; it means thinking catastrophe; it means thinking the possibility of utter annihilation not just for human being but for all that lives on this planet and for the living planet itself. Thinking the earth in our time means thinking what presents itself as that which must not be allowed to go on, as that which must be controlled, as that which must be stopped. Such thinking seems to call for immediate action. There is no time to lose. We must work for change, seek solutions, curb appetites, reduce expectations, find cures now, before the problems become greater than anyone’s ability to solve them – if they have not already done so. However, in the midst of this urgency, thinking ecologically, thinking Heideggerly, means rethinking the very notion of human action. It means placing in question the

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typical Western managerial approach to problems, our propensity for technological intervention, our belief in human cognitive power, our commitment to a metaphysics that places active human being over and against passive nature. For it is the thoughtless deployment of these approaches and notions that has brought us to the point of ecological catastrophe in the first place. Thinking with and after Heidegger, thinking Heideggerly and ecologically, means, paradoxically, acting to place in question the acting subject, willing a displacement of our will to action; it means calling ourselves as selves to rethink our very selves, insofar as selfhood in the West is constituted as agent, as actor, as calculatively controlling ego, as knowing consciousness. Heidegger’s work calls us not to rush in with quick solutions, not to act decisively to put an end to deliberation, but rather to think, to tarry with thinking unfolding itself, to release ourselves to thinking without provision or predetermined aim. Such thinking moves paradoxically, within and at the edge of the tension and the play of calculation and reflection, logos and po•sis, and urgency that can yet abide in stillness. The thinkers whose work makes up this book have felt called to think as Heidegger attempted to think. The essays presented here are responses to that call; they are attempts to take seriously what presents itself to us first of all as paradox; they are attempts to allow thinking to immerse itself in itself at the site of the very difficult question of how thinking might release itself to think the earth. Thus, this volume unfolds itself in the region of paradox. It comprises discussions of how we as active agents might come to hold ourselves resolutely open for the occurring of non-technological, non-managerial, non-agential thought, of how it might come about that speaking, thinking, and living might occur differently, of how we might begin now to undergo the loss of our delusion of impending omnipotence and perhaps escape that delusion’s nihilistic results. The conversants are not environmental experts armed with information about particular crises or the consequences of particular techniques. They are philosophers struggling to open thinking towards paths that will affirm rather than destroy the earth. Part I, ‘Thinking Earth,’ opens with Ladelle McWhorter’s essay, ‘Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection,’ which gives an overview of Heidegger’s thinking on technology and discusses Heidegger’s call for reflection as opposed to instrumental or calculative thinking about the earth. It carefully distinguishes reflection, in Heidegger’s sense, from moral stock taking or ethical judgment. In

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fact, it suggests that moral discourse and practice are themselves forms of technology, sets of techniques for maintaining control over self and other. As such, morality shows itself as a danger, as part of the technological, calculative, managerial thinking that currently endangers the earth itself. The essay closes with a kind of warning: if it is the case that morality is part of technological discourse and practice rather than a separable discourse whose purpose is critique, then moral condemnation and moral guilt are reinstantiations of the calculative. Thus our tendency to feel guilty about our treatment of the earth is not a change of heart but is, rather, a perpetuation of human domination. In Part I’s second essay, ‘Heidegger and Ecology,’ Hanspeter Padrutt describes his experience of coming to see connections between Heidegger’s thought and ecological thinking. He examines several of Heidegger’s most fundamental notions, from ‘coming-forth holdingin-reserve’ (‘aus einer zuvorkommenden zurückhaltung her’) to ‘Gestell,’ in their relation to ecology. He then examines current ecological thinking from a Heideggerian perspective, revealing some of the ways in which ecological thinking undercuts itself or falls back into a language of mastery or control, a language in which ecology’s own most significant insights are in danger of being lost. Finally, he addresses a number of possible criticisms of Heidegger’s ecological thinking. In ‘Earth-Thinking and Transformation,’ Kenneth Maly shows us ways in which Heideggerian reflection on the fact of our being earthdwellers can be transformative of our thinking at its very core and therefore transformative of our world. Maly believes that our culture’s insistence on a divorce between rationality and other ways of thinking and knowing has resulted in an impoverishment of our being and a destructive distancing from the earth that gives rise to, shelters, and sustains us. When we take ourselves and the earth as fixed entities to be comprehended by rational observation and theoretical constructs, we lose sight of the earth and being-human as process, as forever unfixed, as changing, growing, outgrowing, as living and therefore dying. It is only when we begin to think human being and earth as unfixed, as always undergoing transformation in a living unfolding of our/its being, that a new, less destructive understanding of humanity-in/onearth can come into being, with the possibility of a way of living that unfolds within the dynamic paradox of relatedness-as-such. And such understanding, Maly would argue, is absolutely necessary if we are to avoid destroying the earth. Given, then, that Maly’s claim is that we need to move underneath

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traditional Western modes of thought – modes of thought that force us to understand beings as static and unchangeable objects rather than as dynamic processes emerging and unfolding through time – it would be inappropriate for his essay to adhere to the norms of Western scholarship. Maly is true to his work. He presents us not with a carefully argued position but with a movement of thinking. The essay begins within Western rationality and moves in a four-stage process towards a different kind of thinking, one that he calls ‘earth-deep-thinking,’ a thinking that reimages the earth, because, as he says, our images of the earth make us who and what we are. To stay with Maly through his essay, while no easy task for readers schooled in the argumentative and interpretive techniques characteristic of most North American philosophy, is to move with him into this other thinking that he explores and advocates. Gail Stenstad’s response to and elaboration on Maly, ‘Singing the Earth,’ takes us farther along two of the paths that Maly’s thinking indicates: earth as dark (the self-concealing that is both sheltering and frightening) and our longing to be with the earth. She suggests that it is our be-longing to the earth that is at stake. If, when we fear the dark, our desire or longing moves away from what is earthy, we live disconnected from the earth, with disastrous consequences. However, if we allow ourselves to be moved by and with the revealing and concealing of earth and earthy things, our longing is also our be-longing. This be-longing will play itself out in – as Heidegger’s thinking hints – our language (not just words but also song, dance, art, buildings, ritual) and our ways of dwelling. In ‘Call of the Earth: Endowment and (Delayed) Response,’ Robert Mugerauer undertakes to go more deeply into Heidegger’s radical thinking of our situation by engaging it with Jean-Luc Marion’s work on givenness. Marion’s thinking undermines the notion of subjectivity, redefining us as ‘the gifted,’ those to whom the given is given. The given, in turn, is such only in this giving. A discussion of the range of ways in which the play of giving–given–gifted may emerge, whether in ‘natural visibles’ or in works of art, opens the question of how the earth itself may be given. Here, Mugerauer turns to Heidegger’s recalling the ancient thought of phusis, the coming forth of what comes of itself, beyond our control (though not completely). The insight that emerges here is that there is much, much more to earth and to us as those to whom it is given than any reductive approach, whether scientific or philosophical, can encompass. Why? Because ‘givenness hap-

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pens without why,’ and it is only in encountering things without why that we can begin to respond to the call of earth, here and now, in our own places. Opening Part II of the anthology, ‘Animals and the World,’ is Tom Greaves’s contribution, ‘The Word’s Silent Spring: Heidegger and Herder on Animality and the Origin of Language.’ His is the first of three essays that take up the question of animality in Heidegger’s work. Greaves begins by asking: What is the character of the abyssal difference between human and animal that Heidegger speaks of? Is this an unfortunate affirmation of a metaphysics that Heidegger elsewhere works hard to dismantle, or can we understand it in some other way? With close attention to Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, his treatment of Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language in his 1939 seminar, and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Greaves argues for an alternative and far more ecologically significant interpretation. The abyssal difference is not a posited distinction between human and animal, he concludes, but rather a ‘de-cision,’ a ‘cutting,’ a way of hearing the silent language of nature that frees each kind of being into its own element while still allowing all to belong together in their respective environments. Continuing this discussion of animality, Dennis Skocz approaches the question of how we might be with non-human animals in his essay ‘Environmental Management: In the “Age of the World Picture,”’ by way of a careful examination of the uses and risks of geographic information systems (GISs). Skocz views GISs as a sophisticated means of seemingly unlimited whole-earth representation with all the dangers Heidegger views as attendant to representative thinking magnified by its capacity for totalization. It is especially crucial to keep these risks in mind, Skocz insists, when GIS is used – as it so often is – to learn about non-human animals’ behaviour in their own habitats in order to protect them from technological encroachment. A big danger is that a GIS-generated understanding of the animal ‘world’ (or ‘paraworld,’ as Skocz terms it, in contrast to the non-captivating world of the human being) diverges significantly from non-human animal experience. GIS is a visual information technology that de-emphasizes auditory and olfactory experience, for example, and it is not inherently alert to animal instinct or perception of threat. But because GIS is so powerful a tool and so comprehensive, even very well-intentioned users may not only fail to notice significant aspects of animal habitat and behaviour but also fail to notice their own failure to notice. This observation allows Skocz to

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engage in a complex and fruitful analysis of Heidegger’s concepts of readiness- and presence-to-hand. Captivated by its environment, the non-human animal is simply unable to take anything as present-tohand. While the modern human tendency to exalt presence-to-hand as a privileged mode of knowing has resulted in serious damage to our world, it also, Skocz persuasively argues, enables an important kind of freedom from our environment, including from the tools we use. Therefore, though the danger is great, we do not have to be captivated by GIS; we can ‘presentify’ it as a tool. Furthermore, our freedom from the elements of our ready-to-hand world enables us to transpose ourselves onto the paraworld of the non-human animal and to act as what Skocz calls fiduciaries for non-human animals in our efforts to protect them from threats they cannot perceive or instinctually counter. Finally, in ‘Humanity as Shepherd of Being: Heidegger’s Philosophy and the Animal Other,’ Donald Turner takes up the question of whether Heidegger’s work can constitute any sort of practical ethics, given that he refuses the frameworks and aims common in traditional ethical theory. In particular, Turner is concerned with the question of how we might live with non-human animals, and he argues that Heidegger’s work can lead in directions (or allow for ‘creative gestures’) that Heidegger himself did not and perhaps would not have followed out. While Heidegger’s emphasis on language seems to exclude virtually all non-human animals from ethical consideration, Turner finds that Heidegger’s discussion of non-human animals as ‘world-poor’ (rather than world-less) and his use of the phrase ‘shepherd of being’ open towards a possibility for what Heidegger calls ‘transposition,’ a way of being with non-human animals that is neither calculative and grasping nor fundamentally indifferent – in short, a way of knowing and caring without mastery or exploitation. Along the way Turner offers a very clear discussion of Heidegger’s characterization of the bee as captivated by the flower, of human freedom in contrast to this captivation, and of the ‘as such’ structure of human perception – so often disparaged as the foundation of claims to objectivity – as what is first of all freeing in the human encounter with the world, and he provides a thoughtprovoking explication of some of Heidegger’s most important passages on non-human animals. With the opening of Part III, ‘Po•sis and Dwelling,’ we shift focus a bit. While essays in Parts I and II were concerned in various ways with language and its relation to earth-thinking, these final contributions make that theme central. In ‘The Path of a Thinking, Poeticizing Build-

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ing: The Strange Uncanniness of Human Being on Earth,’ Steven Davis examines in great detail Heidegger’s analysis of Sophocles’ ‘Ode on Human Being’ from Antigone, giving particular attention to the notion that human being is not-at-home on earth. With great care Davis sets out the tensions Heidegger sees in the being of human being. Then he uses the elaboration of those tensions to situate the question of whether it is possible for human being to be itself in its uncanniness without also being violent. Remmon E. Barbaza continues the discussion of dwelling with his essay ‘There Where Nothing Happens: The Poetry of Space in Heidegger and Arellano.’ In a meditation before a painting by Filipino artist Juan Arellano, Cloudy Day, Barbaza considers the relationship between Heidegger’s notion of dwelling and the creating of works of art. Heidegger calls us to dwell poetically, Barbaza writes, which means, among other things, to be attuned to the nothing that arises with being. In Arellano’s painting, Barbaza finds such an attunement. Arellano gives voice to the nothing in the bringing-forth of phusis, and thus he participates in that bringing-forth even as he depicts human habitation, and habit, in the midst of what is often called nature. Barbaza concludes with a discussion of poetic measuring (so different from the objectifying measuring of modern technology), which measures nearness without erasing distance, and which takes the measure of human habitude in nothingness. These themes of habitation and nearness carry into Thomas Davis’s essay, ‘Meeting Place,’ which begins with the question of whether one might ‘be invited to neighbour the earth,’ to come to belong with the earth as companion. In order to open this question more fully, Davis draws us through a meditation on two texts: Wendell Berry’s story of his encounter with a hawk in Home Economics, and Heidegger’s memory of the silent dialogue between an oak and a country path in Der Feldweg. Through the course of his meditation, Davis brings us to an awareness of our mortal being as an essential openness to the unfamiliar, as the very possibility of being ‘next-to,’ or neighbouring. And he brings us to a new sense of the earth as the unfamiliar, the unknowable, even as death is unknowable. This is an essay about difference, boundaries, and respectful acknowledgment of otherness; but more than that, it is an essay about the belonging-together, the ‘companioning,’ that is only possible in the acknowledgment of essential difference. Davis’s essay stands in opposition to technological thinking, which always and everywhere encounters nothing but man, nothing but itself. ‘Meeting

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Place’ speaks to difference and to the awe that is possible only within the opening wherein difference is allowed to occur. Ladelle McWhorter’s startling realization that most of us are quite ignorant of the ‘first thing about dwelling’ – what we can eat right here in this place – leads to a conversation with Gail Stenstad about eating and the food we eat. The conversation in ‘Eating Ereignis, or: Conversation on a Suburban Lawn’ quickly becomes a reflection on the urgency of thinking about this matter at a time in which what is so often referred to as ‘our food supply’ comes more and more under the control of a few large megacorporations that care nothing for the earth or its people. But what about this ‘our,’ this ‘we’? Who or what is that? And how is it that it is endangered in the current move towards total control, not just over food but over ‘us’? Del and Gail engage these questions in the space opened up by Heidegger, uncovering historical and contemporary roots of our ignorance, and following thinking towards the ‘first thing beyond the first thing,’ the mystery of dynamic relationality within which we move, think, and – yes – eat. The simple act of eating a weed becomes a radical move that reawakens the now thoughtful eater to the mystery of the rising and concealing we call ‘earth,’ opening the possibility of first inhabiting our place and then dwelling on this earth, a possibility that can emerge only as we begin to imagine and think it. In ‘Down-to-Earth Mystery,’ Gail Stenstad takes up the question of how we can be empowered in a situation in which our thinking and actions seem futile, compelling us to witness helplessly the destruction of earth and world. Coming to grips with the ungrounding of thinking opened up in Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy brings an awareness of the an-archic character of thinking, in which all the traditional dualistic touchstones and fixations (such as objectivity, territoriality, and in general all theoretical aims) fall aside. This is a way to begin to open up the depths of what Heidegger means by releasement towards things, enabling the openness to mystery that embodies in us the groundless grounding from which we are then empowered to respond to the situation in which we actually find ourselves. This is no abstraction, nor yet wordplay. It is this an-archic thinking that can, for example, enable environmental philosophers and other concerned people to work or play with the best insights of any theory, fostering action without the hindrance of the useless expectation of uniform agreement. So there is the possibility of practical empowerment. But even if we see no clearly apparent results of that kind, going deeper yet into the matter awakens us to the magnetic quality of genuine thinking. ‘We are the pointers,’ Heidegger says. Releasing the old expectations, opening to

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mystery without aiming to resolve it, responding to things in the ongoing ungrounded dance of dynamic relationality, enables us first of all to be who we are. Only then may we begin to imagine what it is to dwell on this earth, and act accordingly. Though each essayist presents his or her thinking as it has arisen out of the texts of Martin Heidegger, as this brief overview surely makes clear, the thoughts a reader will encounter here are diverse and at points conflicting. However, the essayists’ differences in many cases actually grow out of a common sense – namely, a sense of urgency born of the knowledge that for many regions of the earth and for many of the beings within them, time is running out. The book itself, including its conflicting assertions, is the embodiment of a kind of anxiety and a kind of care. This book is a beginning, an opening, an attempt, and, we hope, in the best Nietzschean sense of the word, a temptation for further thought. Acknowledgments We owe thanks to the editors of Heidegger Studies for graciously allowing us the translation rights for Hanspeter Padrutt’s essay, ‘Heidegger and Ecology,’ originally published as ‘Heideggers Denken und die Ökologie’ in Heidegger Studies 6 (1990): 43–66. Original versions of some of the essays presented here were first delivered as papers at Truman State University’s 1989 conference ‘Heidegger and the Earth.’ Truman State offered material support for both the conference and the initial publication of some of the papers in 1992. We owe very special thanks to Stella Jones of the University of Richmond’s Department of Philosophy for swiftly and competently converting hardcopy of three of the 1992 papers to twenty-first-century electronic format the old-fashioned way, by typing them. And we owe great thanks to Michele Bedsaule of the University of Richmond Department of Philosophy for her help with copy-editing, indexing, and handling our many mailings, both electronic and hardcopy. Gail Stenstad received an academic year 2005– 6 Noninstructional Assignment from East Tennessee State University, which facilitated the accomplishment of this project. Whitman College generously provided some financial support for the production process, and we especially want to thank Whitman’s Provost and Dean Lori Bettison-Varga. Finally, we are especially grateful to Kenn Maly, our series editor, and to Len Husband, our editor at the University of Toronto Press, for making this long-awaited new edition of Heidegger and the Earth possible.

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HEIDEGGER AND THE EARTH: ESSAYS IN ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Second, Expanded Edition

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PART ONE Thinking Earth

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1 Guilt as Management Technology: A Call to Heideggerian Reflection ladelle m c whorter

Martin Heidegger was born in 1889 in Messkirch, Germany, a small town in the Black Forest. He died in 1976. As these dates indicate, Heidegger lived through a time when the industrialized world was undergoing a series of upheavals probably now only dimly imaginable to those of us who are the products of them. His life spanned an era of political and technological revolution that drastically altered even the most basic patterns of human (and certainly not only human) life in virtually every corner of the world. Heidegger often refers in his writings to some of the most dramatic changes to which he was witness – the loss of rootedness to place that came with the invention of the automobile, then the airplane, and now our various vehicles for travel in interplanetary space; the contracting and conquering of distances that has accompanied the development of communications technologies such as film, radio, television, and, just over a decade after Heidegger’s death, e-mail and the Internet; and of course, the changes in our thinking of and with the natural world that have come as we have become seemingly more and more independent of the earth’s forces, more and more capable of outwitting them and even of harnessing them and forcing them to conform to our wills. These changes – but more especially human beings’ unreflective incorporation of these changes into our bodily rhythms and daily lives – struck Heidegger as strange and very dangerous. It may well be that there is nothing really wrong with using a tractor to plough one’s land or with using a computer to write one’s book, but there is something ominous, Heidegger believed, about our not giving any thought to what is happening to ourselves and to the world when we do those things, or our not noticing or at least not caring about the disruptions these changes bring about in the existing fabric of things.

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Heidegger calls us to give thought to – or give ourselves over to thought of – the strangeness of our technological being within the world. His works resound with calls for human beings to grow more thoughtful, to take heed, to notice and reflect upon where we are and what we are doing, lest human possibility and the most beautiful of possibilities for thought be lost irretrievably in forces we do not understand and perhaps only imagine and pretend we can control. Heidegger’s admonitions are sometimes somewhat harsh: ‘Let us not fool ourselves,’ he wrote in 1955. ‘All of us, including those who think professionally, as it were, are often enough thought-poor; we all are far too easily thought-less. Thoughtlessness is an uncanny visitor who comes and goes everywhere in today’s world. For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and cheapest way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly’ (DT 44–5). To some ears this assertion might sound unnecessarily harsh. We academicians in particular might want to contest his claim. Surely we, who think for a living, cannot be fairly accused of having no thoughts. Look at all we have accomplished; witness all the problems we have solved. We are productive thinkers, and our curricula vitae attest to the fact. But Heidegger had no respect for that or any other kind of defensiveness or for dismissive complacency. The thinking he saw as essential is no more likely, perhaps unfortunately, to be found in universities and among philosophers than anywhere else. For the thinking he saw as essential is not the simple amassing and digesting of facts or even the mastering of complex relationships or the producing of ever more powerful and inclusive theories. The thinking Heidegger saw as essential, the thinking his works call us to, is not a thinking that seeks to master anything, not a thinking that results from a drive to grasp and know and shape the world; it is a thinking that disciplines itself first of all to allow the world – the earth, things – to show themselves on their own terms. Heidegger called this kind of thinking ‘reflection.’ In 1936 he wrote, ‘Reflection is the courage to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called in question’ (QT 116). Reflection is thinking that never rests complacently in the conclusions reached yesterday; it is thinking that continues to think, that never stops with a satisfied smile and announces: We can cease; we have the right answer now. On the contrary, it is thinking that loves its own life, its own occurring, that does not quickly put a stop to itself, as thinking intent on a finding a fast and efficient solution always tries to do.

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Thinking today must concern itself with the earth. Wherever we turn – on newsstands, on the airwaves, and even in the most casual of conversations everywhere – we are inundated with predictions of ecological catastrophe and omnicidal doom. And many of these predictions bear themselves out in our own experience. We see the expanding muddy landscapes and contracting glaciers at the extremities of our inhabited planet. We see the horrific damage that increasingly powerful hurricanes do to tropical and temperate coastlines whose wetlands and dunes have given way to high-rise condominiums and oil and natural gas refineries. We know there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of a New England state, the result of poisons draining into the sea along with the topsoil from Midwestern factory farms. We see and hear and pay the medical bills for the millions of children with asthma whose lungs are scarred or underdeveloped as a consequence of the regular inhalation of toxic industrial and vehicular effluent. We live every day with the ugly, painful, and impoverishing consequences of decades of technological innovation and expansion without restraint, of at least a century of disastrous ‘natural resource management’ policies, and of more than two centuries of virtually unchecked industrial pollution – consequences that include the fact that millions of us on any given day are suffering, many of us dying of diseases and malnutrition that are the results of humanly produced ecological devastation; with the fact that thousands of species now in existence will no longer exist on this planet five years from now; with the fact that our entire planet’s climate has been altered, probably irreversibly, by the carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons we have heedlessly poured into our atmosphere; and with the mind-boggling fact – though few minds take the time to boggle in fact anymore – that it may now be within humanity’s power to destroy all life on this globe. Our usual response to dire reports and prophecies of doom is to ignore them or, when we cannot do that – when they really are in our own backyards – to scramble to find some way to manage our problems and make them go away, some quick and preferably inexpensive solution, some technological fix. But over and over again new resource-management techniques, new solutions, and new technologies disrupt delicate systems even further, doing still more damage to a planet whose normally self-regulating systems are already dangerously out of balance. Our ceaseless interventions seem only to make things worse, to perpetuate a cycle of human activity followed by ecological disaster followed by human intervention followed by a new disaster of another kind. In

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fact, it would appear that our trying to do things, change things, fix things, cannot be the solution, because it is part of the problem itself. But where does that leave us? If we cannot act to solve our problems, what should we do? Heidegger’s work is a call to reflect, to think in some way other than calculatively, technologically, pragmatically. Once we begin to move with and into Heidegger’s call and begin to see our trying to seize control and solve problems as itself a problematic approach, if we still believe that thinking’s only real purpose is to function as a prelude to action, in attempting to think we will only twist within the agonizing grip of paradox, feeling pure frustration, unable to conceive of ourselves as anything but paralysed. However, as so many peoples before us have known, paradox is not only a trap; it is also a scattering point and a passageway. Paradox invites examination of its own constitution (hence of the patterns of thinking within which it occurs) and thereby breaks a way of thinking open, revealing the configurations of power that propel it and hold it on track. And thus it sometimes makes possible the dissipation of that power and the deflection of thinking into new paths and new possibilities. If we read him seriously and listen genuinely, Heidegger frustrates us. At a time when the stakes are so very high and decisive action is so loudly and urgently called for, when the ice caps are melting and the bird flu is spreading and the president is selling off our national wilderness reserves to private contractors for quick private gain, Heidegger apparently calls us to do – nothing. When things that matter so much are hanging in the balance, this frustration quickly turns to anger and disgust and even furor. How dare this man, who might legitimately be accused of having done nothing right himself at a crucial time in his own nation’s history, elevate quietism to a philosophical principle? Responsible people have to act, surely, and to suggest anything else is to side with the forces of destruction and short-sighted greed. If we get beyond the revulsion and anger that Heidegger’s call may initially inspire and actually examine the feasibility of response, we may move past the mere frustration of our moral desires and begin to undergo frustration of another kind, the philosophical frustration that is attendant on paradox. How is it possible, we ask, to choose, to will, to do nothing? Heidegger is not consecrating quietism. His call places in question the bimodal logic of activity and passivity; it points out the paradoxical nature of our passion for action, our passion for maintaining control. What is the origin of that drive? Is that drive itself really un-

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der our control? Is it something we choose and will, or it is something whose origins and meanings transcend us? The call itself suggests that our drive for acting decisively and forcefully is part of what must be thought through, that the narrow option of will versus surrender is one of the power configurations of current thinking that must be allowed to dissipate. But of course, those drives and those conceptual dichotomies are part of the very structure of our self-understanding both as individuals and as a tradition and a civilization. Hence, Heidegger’s call is a threatening one, requiring great courage, ‘the courage to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called in question’ (QT 116). Heidegger’s work pushes thinking to think through the assumptions that underlie both our ecological vandalism and our love of scientific and technological solutions, assumptions that also ground the most basic patterns of our current ways of being human. What is most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of the ecological debate, we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits. On the other hand, conservationists want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and grizzly bears and recreational facilities for future generations to use and enjoy. These groups, and factions within them, debate vociferously over which management policies are the best – that is, the most cost-efficient and manageable. Radical environmentalists damn both groups and contend that it is human population growth, resource consumption, and rising expectations that are in need of management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a middleclass child graduates from high school, she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to name just three. As we approach middle age we continue to practise these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and the body begins to break down. And we add new regimes: financial management, anger management, grief management. We have become a society of managers – of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies – so is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? Not creatures, not residents, not sojourners, not servants

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or attendants, certainly not worshippers, but managers of the planet we live on, have always lived on, the planet that gives us our very lives. As thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask: What does this signify? In numerous ways – in particular, in the beautiful 1953 essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ – Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear disaster or environmental catastrophe, but also in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of ‘the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by ‘the mystery’ Heidegger means some sort of entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. If we read him that way, the hard-headed among us could dismiss him as a soft-headed mystic simply dreaming of a realm beyond this corrupted and injured one, and then we could say no wonder he does not worry about actually doing anything to address the ecological problems we face in the world today. But that would be a serious misreading. ‘The mystery’ is not the name of some thing either beyond the tangible world or here before us; it is, instead and rather simply, the occurring together of revealing and concealing. Every academic discipline, be it biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the revelation of new truths. Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world, is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call the revealing, the bringing to light, the coming to presence of things. However, in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop paying attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading stock-market reports and cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. We all know this simple fact. But Heidegger’s assertion is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human limitations. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious – that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two truly dif-

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ferent experiences simultaneously. His is not a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneously reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding in dream. How things come forth conceals both other things and other ways those things might have come forth otherwise. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus when revealing occurs, concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own happening and to the shadows that it casts, so that revealing conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our forgetting is forgotten, and all traces of absence then absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time (1988, 10), writes that ‘the eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.’ Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. It would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation, could or would need to occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of Hawking’s is a dream of power; indeed, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. And of course it is not Hawking’s dream alone. This, Heidegger would contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. As a people, as a culture, as an age, we dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control, then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, Heidegger warns us. And it itself is predicated, ironically enough, on concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never control or manage or even grasp the mystery, the belonging together of revealing and concealing. In order to approach the world in a manner exclusively technological, calculative, mathematical, scientific, we must already have given up (or lost, or been expelled by, or perhaps ways of being such as we are even impossible within) other approaches or modes of revealing that would unfold into knowledges of other sorts. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must

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already have been obliterated or at least totally obscured; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial approach to the world lies not, then, in what it knows – not in its penetration into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything. What is now especially dangerous about this sense of our own managerial power, born of forgetfulness, is that it results in our viewing the world as mere resources to be stored or consumed. Managerial or technological thinkers, Heidegger says, view the earth, the world, all things, as mere Bestand, standing-reserve. All is here simply for human use. No plant, no animal, no ecosystem has a life of its own, has any significance, outside the bounds of human desire and need. Nothing, we say, other than human beings, has any intrinsic value. All things are instruments for the working out of human will. Whether we believe that God gave Man dominion or simply that human might (sometimes called intelligence or rationality) in the face of ecological fragility makes us always right, we managerial, technological thinkers tend to believe that the earth is only a stockpile or a set of commodities to be inventoried, developed, marketed, and sold. The forest is timber; the river, a power source. Even people have become resources, human resources, personnel to be managed, or populations to be controlled. This managerial, technological mode of thinking, Heidegger says, is embedded in and constitutive of Western culture and has been gathering strength for centuries. Now it is well on its way to extinguishing all other modes of revealing, all other ways of being human and being earth. It will take tremendous courage and resolve to allow thought of the mystery to come forth; thought of the inevitability, along with revealing, of concealment, of loss, of ignorance; thought of the occurring of things and their passage as events not ultimately under human jurisdiction and authority. And of course even the call to allow this thinking – couched as it so often must be in a grammatical imperative appealing to an agent – is itself a paradox, the first (but only the first) that must be faced and allowed to speak to us and to shatter us as it scatters thinking in new directions, directions of which we have not yet dreamed, directions of which we may never be able to dream.

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And shattered we may be, for our self-understanding is at stake; in fact, our very selves – selves engineered by technologies of power that shaped, indeed, that are modernity – are at stake. Any thinking that threatens the notion of human being as modernity has posited it – as rationally self-interested individual, as self-possessed bearer of rights and obligations, as active mental and moral agent – is thinking that threatens our very being, the configurations of subjective existence in our age. Those configurations of forces will resist this call for thinking. Their resistance will occur in many forms. However, one common way that modern calculative selfhood will attempt to reinstate itself in the face of Heidegger’s paradoxical call to think the earth is by employing a strategy that has worked so well so many times before; it will feel guilty, and it will try to make others feel similarly. Those of us who are white (at least those of us of a certain age and socio-economic class) know this strategy very well. Confronted with our racism, we respond not by working to dismantle the structures that perpetuate racism but rather by feeling guilty. Our energy goes into self-rebuke, and the problems pointed out to us become so painful for us to contemplate that we keep our distance from them. Through guilt we paralyse ourselves. Thus guilt is a marvellous strategy for maintaining a white racist self. Those of us who are women have sometimes watched a very similar strategy employed by the caring, liberal-minded men in our lives. When we have exposed sexism, pressed our criticisms and our claims, we have seen such men – the ‘good’ men, by far the most responsive and respectful men – deflate, apologize, and ask us to forgive. But seldom have we seen honest attempts at change. Instead we have seen guilt deployed as a cry for mercy or pity on the status quo; and when pity is not forthcoming we have seen guilt turn to rage, and we have heard men ask, ‘Why are you punishing us?’ The primary issue then becomes the need to attend to the feelings of those criticized rather than to their oppressive institutions and behaviours. Guilt thus protects the guilty. Guilt is a facet of power; it is not a reordering of power or a signal of oppression’s end. Guilt is one of the modern managerial self’s manoeuvres of self-defence. Of course guilt does not feel that way. It feels like something distinctly not chosen, something we unwillingly undergo. Insofar as it is an active phenomenon, it feels much more like self-abuse than self-defence. But we who are capable of feeling guilty are selves who have been and are shaped, informed, produced in our very selves by the same forces

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of history that have created calculative, technological revealing. Inevitably, whenever we are confronted with the unacceptability of what is foundational for our lives, those foundations exert force to protect themselves. The exertion, which occurs as and in the midst of very real pain, is not a conscious choice; but that fact does not lessen – in fact it strengthens – guilt’s power as a strategy of self-defence. Calculative, technological thinking struggles to defend and maintain itself through us and as us. Some men feel guilty about sexism; some white people feel guilty about racism; most people in the modern world feel guilty about all sorts of habits and idiosyncrasies that we tell ourselves we firmly believe we should change. For many of us guilt is a constant constraint on our lives, a seemingly permanent state. As a result, guilt is familiar, and, though somewhat uncomfortable at times, it comes to feel almost safe. It is no surprise, then, that whenever caring people think hard about how to live with/in/on the earth, we find ourselves growing anxious and, usually, feeling guilty about the way we conduct ourselves in relation to the natural world – guilt about how much petroleum we burn, guilt about how much trash we throw in landfills and rivers and oceans, guilt about patronizing supermarkets with ten-thousand-kilometre supply lines rather than local organic farms and fruit stands, guilt about eating meat when we know that hog farms are a major source of groundwater pollution and that cattle raising is destroying the rainforests and with them the air, guilt about not always taking the trouble to recycle the plastic bottles from which we drink water from melted glaciers owned and sold by transnational corporations, and on and on and on. And yet we rarely actually alter our behaviour. Guilt is a standard defence against the call for change as it first begins to take root within us. But if we are to think with Heidegger, we must not stop with guilt; we must not respond to his call to reflect simply by deploring our decadent lifestyles and indulging ourselves in token and fleeting fits of remorse. Heidegger’s call is not a moral condemnation, nor is it a call to take up some politically correct position or some privileged ethical stance. When we respond to Heidegger’s call as if it were a moral condemnation, when we feel accused and guilty, we reinstate a discourse in which active agency and its projects and responsibilities take precedence over any other way of being with the earth. In other words, we insist on remaining within the discourses, the power configurations, of the modern managerial self. Guilt is a concept whose heritage and

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meaning occur within the ethical tradition of the Western world. But the history of ethical theory in the West is one with the history of technological thought. The revelation of things as to-be-managed and the imperative to be in control work themselves out in the history of the natural and human sciences. It is probably quite true that in many different cultures, times, and places human beings have asked this question: How shall I best live my life? But in the West, and in relatively modern times, we have reformulated that question so as to ask: How shall I conduct myself? How shall I behave? How shall I manage my actions, my relationships, my desires? And how shall I make sure my neighbours do the same? Alongside technologies of the earth have grown up technologies of the soul, theories of human behavioural control of which current ethical theories are a significant subset. Ethics – in the modern world at least – very often functions as just another field of scientific study yielding just another set of engineering goals. Therefore, when we react to problems like ecological crisis by retreating into the familiar discomfort of our Western sense of guilt, we are not placing ourselves in opposition to technological thinking and its ugly consequences. On the contrary, we are simply reasserting our technological dream of perfect managerial control. How so? Our guilt professes our enduring faith in the managerial dream by insisting that problems – problems like oil spills, acid rain, groundwater pollution, the extinction of whales and songbirds, the destruction of the ozone layer, the rainforests, the glaciers, the wetlands – lie simply in mismanagement or in a failure to manage (to manage ourselves in this case) and by reaffirming to ourselves that if we had used our power to manage our behaviour better in the first place we could have avoided this mess. In other words, when we respond to Heidegger’s call by indulging in feelings of guilt about how we have been treating the object earth, we are really just telling ourselves how truly powerful we, as agents, are. We are telling ourselves that we really could have done differently; we had the power to make things work, if only we had stuck closer to the principles of good management. And in so saying we are in yet a new and more stubborn way refusing to hear the real message, the message that human beings are not, never have been, and never can be in complete control, that the dream of that sort of managerial omnipotence is itself the very danger of which Heidegger warns. Thus guilt – as affirmation of human agential power over and against passive matter – is just another way of concealing the mystery. Thus

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guilt is just another way of refusing to face the fact that we human beings are finite and that we must begin to live with the earth instead of trying to maintain total control. Guilt is part and parcel of a managerial approach to the world. Thinking along Heidegger’s paths means resisting the power of guilt, resisting the desire to close ourselves off from the possibility of being with our own finitude. It means finding ‘the courage to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called into question.’ It means holding ourselves resolutely open for the shattering power of the event of thinking, even if what is shattered eventually is ourselves.

2 Heidegger and Ecology* hanspeter padrutt

In a lecture delivered in 1951, Heidegger discussed a late poem by Hölderlin in which these lines appear: Humans dwell on this earth Full of merit, but also poetically.1

At the end of the lecture, in which Heidegger had shown in what sense our dwelling is fundamentally poetic, he called our present dwelling ‘completely unpoetic.’ It is unpoetic ‘because of a peculiar excess of raging measuring and calculating’ (GA 7:202–3). The diagnosis refers to our ‘genuine need for dwelling’ (ibid., 162), the need for our dwelling on the earth. Heidegger had this dwelling in mind already in the second chapter of the first section of Being and Time, where he distinguished the ‘being-in’ of our ‘being-in-the-world’ from a thing’s being simply present within a container – and ascertained our being-in, from the original meaning of the German word bin, as a dwelling; ‘ich bin’ says: I stay with, am intimate with, dwell (GA 2:72–3). Dwelling in the world is equally originally a dwelling in language. That is why in his ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1946), Heidegger named language, this ‘house of being,’ as the ‘housing’ in which humans ‘dwell’ (GA 9:313). Heidegger indicated just how a poetic dwelling might look in the lecture ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (also 1951): mortals dwell ‘insofar as they rescue the earth.’ This ‘rescuing’ is not to be understood only as a rescuing of something from danger, but also (in the old sense of the word) as ‘freeing something into its own way of being [unfolding: Wesen].’ Rescuing the earth is quite different from using it up or exploiting it. Rescuing the earth does not subdue the earth. Furthermore, mortals dwell ‘insofar as they welcome the sky as sky,’ ‘insofar as they

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await divinities as divinities,’ and insofar as they ‘escort’ themselves and fellow human beings. Thus mortals, in dwelling near/with things, spare, protect, and preserve (schonen) the ‘fourfold’ of earth, sky, god, and humans (GA 7:150–1). I will return to Heidegger’s initially strange-sounding references to ‘preserving the fourfold.’ For now these references and quotations are meant only to show that in an all-embracing sense, Heidegger’s thinking can be seen as a message about dwelling, a saying about human dwelling. The Greek word for ‘dwell’ is oikeo, and oikos means ‘home’ or ‘household’; the Greek word for ‘say’ is legein; and logos means ‘saying’; thus ‘dwelling-saying’ is eco-logy. Wohn-sage ist Oeko-logie. The term ‘ecology’ was coined in 1866 by the zoologist Ernst Haeckel. As a concept it meant ‘the science of the household of nature.’ As a natural science, ecology is a part of biology – according to Haeckel, it is ‘the science of the relationships of the organism to its surrounding environment.’ But since the sheer number of organisms is almost immeasurable and since their surrounding environments are thoroughly interwoven, this science from its inception has had to transcend specialization and somehow see the world as a whole. Thus, when the emerging debate over the environment in the early 1970s brought scientific ecology out of the shadows into the bright light of public view, it inevitably happened that in general usage, the concept of ecology moved beyond its narrow, biological meaning and came into use more and more in connection with the idea of protecting the environment, with a ‘holistic’ way of seeing. When an association of ecology-minded doctors was recently established in Germany, it was not intended mainly to be a society for the advancement of the science of ecology, but rather a coming together of medical doctors who were sensitive to issues of ecology in this more general and all-embracing sense of the word. In this broad sense, ecology refers exclusively to our dwelling on the earth; the Greek word oiko-logia, which allows both meanings of ‘household-science’ and ‘dwelling-saying,’2 fits both the narrow, biological sense and the all-embracing sense. It is, of course, in this broad sense that I use the word ecology in the title of this essay: ‘Heidegger and Ecology.’ I intend to show the extent to which Heidegger’s thinking opens up human dwelling. I have already described ecology in the new, broad sense as dwelling-saying. In this way Heidegger’s thinking and ecology are brought into proximity. But is this proximity real, or is it an apparent and illusory proximity based on a cute play on the Greek words?

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In responding to this question, I will do four things: (1) I will briefly describe how I came to see the connection between Heidegger’s thinking and ecology. (2) I will show which of Heidegger’s fundamental notions are especially significant for ecology. (3) I will examine some central notions of the ecology movement from the vantage point of a path of thinking inspired by Heidegger. And (4) I will discuss a few critical objections. Fabienne and Doutreval I attended a so-called humanistic Gymnasium in Zurich. The classical components of the curriculum were taught in what was to me a context of boundless boredom, whereas a lively spirit reigned in the natural sciences. Since I did not quite know what I should become, I took up a discipline whose spirit was easy to grasp: medicine. And that move pulled me more and more towards the natural sciences. Physics intrigued me with its efforts to find the secret ‘formula for the universe,’ and molecular biology intrigued me with its unravelling of the riddle of life. Yet in spite of this fascination, I must have also intuited the meaninglessness of the world as explicated by the natural sciences. There is no other way to explain how a passage in a work by the French novelist Maxence van der Meersch touched me so deeply towards the end of my studies. Doutreval, a medical doctor, and his daughter Fabienne are on a hike. While resting in a meadow surrounded by humming insects, Doutreval tells Fabienne: ‘Listen, Fabienne. Imagine this! One day the human being will vanish from the earth, thus extinguishing the last conscience and the last clear consciousness from the world. But these billions of tiny animals will nevertheless continue to sing their concert on their mountain, will continue to mate, and will again and again experience anew their idiotic fate, without progress or change, as always, since the beginning of the world. You saw the imprint of a dragonfly from the tertiary period on a piece of limestone, in the museum of Aix, didn’t you? A dragonfly which looked exactly like all the others that buzz around us here with their blue wings. Why have they held onto life so stubbornly, these dragonflies, since the beginning of time and throughout the whole killing of one another that we call life? They are older than humans and will clearly outlast us by infinite centuries, lasting till the extinguishing of the last form of life on the earth’s crust. And that is called life: a hideous, meaningless game, worse than the craziest dream.’

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Van der Meersch continues: And in the face of the boisterous splendor of the afternoon Doutreval pointed to the murdering, massacring and destroying, the torture, and the whole ghastly drama that was being played out in the meadow in which we were sprawled, in order to enjoy the splendid peace of nature, as one says. The praying mantis who swallows her mate during copulation; the spider who murders the fly and then in turn is itself stabbed by others; the wasp whose three-way stinger bores with scientific precision through the three nerve-centers of the stinkbug, before it drags the bug away, so that its larvae can eat the unfortunate insect as alive and fresh – always the prime bites, whereby with a ghastly cleverness they save the nerve-centers for last, so they can enjoy living flesh up to the very last morsel. The bee fly whose maggots simply press against the skin of the larvae of the mud dauber, and suck it, breathe in it – pumping out and carefully draining the living saucepan that the larva presents for it – always paying careful attention that the larva does not die until the last drop has been sucked out. The digger wasp, who kills the bees but then, before it drags its victims away, presses against the necks so that they vomit the honey out, and sucks up the tongue of the dying booty, stuck out in desperation. All of this murdering in one tiny corner of the earth. And it is the same everywhere, from one end of the world to the other, including the depths of the ocean. And all the sprouts that die, the billions and billions of pollen and seeds that carry life in them but never get born into existence! What a waste of life, intrinsically condemned to death!3

It was in such a mood that I encountered Heidegger’s thinking. The more I ran up against the philosophical bases and epochal limitations of scientific knowledge, the less fascinating physics and molecular biology became. And a meadow became once again a meadow. Shortly afterwards, I realized that Heidegger’s thinking had already influenced medicine and biology. I read books by Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss and became a Daseins-analytical psychotherapist rather than a geneticist. (Thanks to Boss I was able to participate in some of the seminars that Heidegger held in Zollikon near Zurich in the 1960s.) Yet I remained enough of a physicist not to miss the ecological warnings given in the early 1970s by biologists, physicists, and cyberneticists. Thus from the very beginning I felt a connection between ecological and phenomenological, Daseins-analytical ‘rethinking.’ I must say, however, that it was not easy for me to be understood in

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this regard. Some phenomenologically oriented psychologists and philosophers viewed ecological questions as merely technical, or as ‘calculative thinking’ – or even worse, as plots hatched by and directed from Moscow. And some ecologists who had been schooled in the sciences took philosophical approaches to their specialty as mere intellectual acrobatics, as a useless waste of time, or even as a sign of hidebound elitism. I also found that I often received a warm reception if I borrowed a thought from Heidegger’s work and offered it as my own – but that the same thought often offended people when I admitted to the source. This stems in part, both in Switzerland and in Germany, from the fact that many still link Heidegger solely with the Freiburg Rectoral Address. (I will not go into the issue of his political engagement here. I discussed it extensively in my book Der epochale Winter.4) However, the isolation I felt because of my view of the relation between ecology and Heidegger’s thought did not last long. In Heidegger’s memorial volume (published by Neske), I learned that something like what took place later within the Club of Rome was already on Heidegger’s mind during the lectures on technology that he gave in Bremen.5 I am not recounting all of this because I think that my own thinking is particularly interesting, but as background for what I hope to do next, which is lay out some fundamental thoughts of Heidegger that I consider especially significant for ecology. Three Fundamental Notions from Heidegger and Their Connection to Ecology Coming-Forth Holding-in-Reserve in Phenomenology and Its Connection to Ecology In the short text ‘Markings’ (1969), Heidegger wrote that the astonishing thing about the Greeks of the classical age is that they caught sight of the sayable from out of a ‘coming-forth holding-in-reserve’ (aus einer zuvorkommenden Zurückhaltung her) (GA 13:211).6 And in his lecture ‘Language’ (1950), he said that ‘coming-forth holdingin-reserve’ is the way in which mortals are to dwell in language (GA 12:30). I have found this term ‘coming-forth holding-in-reserve’ only in these two places in Heidegger’s texts; still, this phrase seems to me a very suitable designation for the basic comportment of that phenomenology which – according to Being and Time – lets that which shows

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itself from out of itself, self-showing, be seen and thus pay heed to what makes up the initially and most hidden sway of what self-shows (GA 2:46–7). Holding-in-reserve ‘holds back’ from naive prejudice and rash theory, from the chatter and bustle of the public eye, and from the historically conditioned covering over and displacement. For its part, coming-forth is not to be confused with superficial ‘appearance’; rather, it fits with what is unpretentiously own – unsaid and unthought, unexpected – to the ‘originary’ in future and in history. Coming-forth also fits with what is called ‘fore-running’ into the possibility of death in Being and Time, which – when called by the call of conscience – ensures the ‘disclosedness’ in any given ‘situation’ and is not to be confused with a rash, breakneck leap. The notion of coming-forth holding-inreserve is also broad enough to help us elucidate – at least a little – the preserving fourfold, which I mentioned at the beginning of this essay (GA 7:150–1). Mortals rescue the earth by not exploiting it and by letting the earth be earth. Letting-be means not only letting the earth be at rest, but also letting its being come forth, letting what is own to it come forth, letting earth emerge, including emerge into flora and fauna. Mortals receive the sky by not conquering it and by letting it be, coming forth and drawn to day and night, the seasons of the year, the weather patterns – and also by forgoing those technical dialectics that make night into day and winter into summer. Mortals await the gods by avoiding dogma and worship of idols and by paying heed, in the absence of the godly, to the withdrawal of the unfamiliar, the fullness, and the brilliance. And mortals accompany one another and themselves by pulling back from that fallenness in which – according to Being and Time – a countering is in play ‘under the mask of being-with’ (GA 2:232) or in which fellow human beings are treated like countable numbers and sickness and death are treated like breakdowns in the machine. Mortals accompany one another and themselves by anticipating one another in genuine concern-for, fore-running, into the possibility of death (GA 2:163, 348) – all of this through coming-forth holding-in-reserve. But coming-forth holding-in-reserve is also a fitting designation for that fundamental comportment that permeates ecology (i.e., ecology in its broadest sense); for what is at issue in ecology is a fundamental comportment of self-effacement, respect, and joining in with a broader connectedness, one that bears us up and withdraws itself from our control.7 Ecology turns away from the hubris of modern man, who dominates and controls nature and sits on the throne of the world like the

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king of the sun in autocratic autonomy. And in contrast to the shortsightedness of the modern human, who plunges blindly into technical progress, ecology tries to pay heed to the whole. And ecology is tuned to husbandry and preservation. Ecology is of course still strongly infiltrated by the world view of biology, which, for example, is also the backdrop for the despondent text by Max van der Meersch. Heidegger’s thinking stays away from that. In no way can the world view of biology be taken for granted. Perhaps a meadow is not a battlefield, but a meadow. A meadow is a meadow. That is a tautological sentence, one that says the same from out of the same, in a sense a circular statement. But this tautological sentence avoids the inclination to see the meadow as a battlefield. Repeating itself in this unusual way, the sentence intimates and thus draws us towards what is own to the meadow, which is not a swamp or a glacier. The tautological, encircling sentence is in accord with coming-forth holding-in-reserve. As we know, ever since Heidegger we have spoken of the hermeneutic circle that belongs to phenomenological interpretation. One cannot avoid the circling of this circle. Rather, it is incumbent on us to enter the circle. Near the end of his life, in the Zähringen Seminar, Heidegger said that the ‘originary’ sense of phenomenology is ‘tautological thinking’ (S 399). Thus, just as coming-forth holding-in-reserve, which calls the shortsightedness of modern thinking into question, is of great importance for ecology, so too, possibly, is tautological circling. For circular, hermeneutic, tautological thinking also calls into question our linear-deductive thinking, which has emerged from Western logic, has become formulated in computing, and today is evident everywhere (e.g., in biology, cybernetics, and industry): hypothesis o proof o conclusion problem o calculation o result impulse o organism o reaction input o electronic data processing o output raw material o production o product (and waste …) Ecology’s coming to terms with phenomenology could thus lend a new meaning to an ecological term that has already become somewhat trite: recycling, not only as reusing waste, but also as a tautological return to the circle, as withdrawal from the linear pro-gress pro-gressing into an empty nothing. A meadow is a meadow.8

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Shifting from the Objectifying Subject to Dasein and Its Connection to Ecology In the Zähringen Seminar of 1973, Heidegger said that the basic thrust in Being and Time is a shifting, whereby what philosophy up to now has displaced into the self-enclosed place of consciousness is shifted into the open expanse of the Da (S 385).9 For example, if I now think of the Freiburg Cathedral – an example often used by Heidegger – then what is given to me in this imaging is the cathedral itself, out there on the cathedral grounds, and not a representation of it in my consciousness or in my brain. The place of consciousness is the place of the objectifying Cartesian subject. This subject, the ‘thinking substance’ of the ‘I think therefore I am,’ tyrannically brings objects before itself. It stands in the centre, surveys, and examines on all sides – sees in perspective – from its own point of view. It is no accident that construction from a central perspective was discovered by two architects in the early Renaissance and soon took its place victoriously in painting. This perspectival relationship of the primary (human) subject to the perspectivally observed world (a relationship that emerged during the Renaissance) – this perspectival ‘world view’ – is inextricably linked with the emergence of the method of natural science grounded in mathematics. The self-certain domination of the subject and the objectifying method that yields certainty belong together; together they form what I would call ‘objectifying subjectivism.’ The objectifying method – wanting to measure and calculate everything, for the sake of certainty – yearns to reduce everything that exists to measurable and calculable quantities. Weight, distance, and duration were most amenable to exact measurement; but then the objectifying method reduced nature, too, to a coherence of motions of a whole series of points in a three-dimensional, geometric space, coursing in one-dimensional time, thought of as a ‘time-axis,’ and reduced things to geometric substances with defined extension. Since this reduction robbed events of their singularity, a repeatable reeling off of the same event became thinkable; repeatable experimenting and engineering set forth on its triumphal procession, accompanied by the interpretation of nature and the whole world as a machine. In objectifying subjectivism, human beings see themselves as ‘masters and owners of nature’ and the world as a gigantic machine. Finally, the objectifying turns back to the subject and, with the machine now supreme, itself is interpreted more and more exclusively as a functional, psychosomatic apparatus.10

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In order to get closer to the ‘meaning of being,’ the meaning of the little word is – which is spoken in manifold ways (Aristotle) and which oscillates unsaid in everything that is and in all that happens – Heidegger in Being and Time in a certain sense begins where Descartes left off. I think, therefore I am; but what does ‘I am’ mean? To get closer to the meaning of ‘is,’ Heidegger undertook an analysis of the ‘am,’ an analysis of everyday Dasein, which has in its being a relation to its being (and to being in general). Dasein is in the world, but not as an item of clothing is in the closet; rather, it is thrown into the world – it has the task of being its being as its own being. Dasein is ‘my own’ ‘thrown projection’ in connection with what encounters it: care (Sorge). But Dasein is not a substance that is merely at hand, it is not a thinking substance, and it is not a psychosomatic apparatus. Furthermore, Dasein is also not merely a specimen of a living organism or of the species animal rationale (rational animal). In Dasein, in the disclosure of self in a singular manner as well as of the world, there takes place a disclosure or opening of being. But this disclosure is thoroughly ‘ek-static,’ outside itself, not closed up in itself, but ‘outside’ – out there, as with the Freiburg Cathedral mentioned earlier. This being-out-there refers not only to the present, but also and equally to the world horizon of the future and of the past. What Heidegger in Being and Time called the horizonal-existential disclosure of being in Dasein – in the disclosure of self and of the world – later, after the ‘turning’ in his thinking, he spoke of more and more as the indwelling opening-out of the clearing of being, as indwelling in the temporal, threefold open and the opening-out of this indwelling through the whole of Dasein. Ex-sistenz thus meant indwelling openingout of the open expanse of the Da. The shifting from the objectifying subject to the open expanse of the Da leads us away from the standpoint of the subject that stands in the centre of the world, towards the mystery of the world itself, towards the enowning (Ereignis) of being and of time, which we do not have at our disposal but into which we are let. This shift is a simultaneous re-thinking and re-turning, a leap into the open expanse of the Da. The re-turning is nothing less than the re-turning already mentioned, from the dreadful, short-sighted hubris into the pain-filled, buoyant, spirited, released coming-forth holding-in-reserve. And the re-thinking leads away from objectifying calculating and measuring towards phenomenological, meditative thinking, from natural science’s reduction of phenomena to the upholding of their fullness, from the perspectival

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world view to a regard for the inseparable interconnectedness of thinking, world, human, death, sky, earth, and language: to mindfulness of enowning of being and time, of enowning of the world-fourfold: rethinking leads away from progress towards ‘overture.’ This shift has many consequences with varied significance for diverse disciplines. For ecology the following consequences seem to me of fundamental importance: The world is no longer the universe, ‘all of the world,’ the sum of everything, but rather the play of the world (SG 186f.) in which we are inseparably connected co-players. What we call space and time also belong in this play of the world. However, space is no longer three-dimensional, calculable, geometric space, but rather the play of places, the playing together of the places of a region (GA 13:208). And time is no longer a one-dimensional time axis, but the play of time, which grants presence and absence in the three dimensions of future, past, and present (SD, 15f.). Language is no longer expression, means of communication, and the giving of signs by the subject, but rather the house of being in which we dwell, the coming forth of world and thing, an oscillation of the enowning of being and time. The word is no longer an informationcipher, no longer a label-appendage separable from the things, but rather in a certain sense ‘the flowering of clearing,’ ‘the blossom of enowning [Ereignis].’11 If the human being is not a rational animal, but rather the indwelling opening-out of the Da, then perhaps the definition of animal as animal lacking reason is also false. As a rule we either take the animal as organism and thus as a machine, or we interpret it anthropomorphically, from the human standpoint. From the human point of view the animal can perhaps be called ‘world-poor’ (i.e., as not having a world). Heidegger spoke in this way during his lecture course of 1929–30 (GA 29:273–396). However, some years later he no longer said this. Rather: Because we cannot speak with the animals, ‘our human interpreting’ finds ‘hardly any way’ of understanding ‘as soon as it shuns the mechanical explication of the animal, which can always be done, as well as the anthropomorphic explanation’ (GA 7:274). But then Doutreval’s description of the meadow as a battlefield is also questionable, because it is filled with mechanical explication and anthropomorphic explanation. Does the praying mantis’s mate really experience a ‘ghastly drama’ in copulation? Finally, with the shifting from the objectifying subject, what is own to

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the thing has to be thought anew. Here we are always already closer to things than a ‘theory of knowledge’ that proceeds from sense perception postulates. We hear the automobile (that drives by outside) itself, and not simply an acoustic sensation (GA 5:10). A theory of knowledge that has to bridge the gulf between subject and object becomes superfluous. The thing is also no longer an object of representing that can be broken down into form and matter or substance and accidents or defined more precisely. Rather, the thing is in a certain sense a process of gathering: the thing things; it lets the world ‘linger’ (GA 7:79). It is obvious that the shift from the objectifying subject to the Da has various consequences for ecology. At issue for ecology, too, is the descent of humans from their anthropocentric throne and the surrender of their autocratic, tyrannical position that makes everything around into their object. Of course, there are tripping places on this descent that can be detected more easily if we pay heed to this shift in the way that Heidegger does. (I will return to this later.) The three steps that articulate my attempt to show how Heidegger’s thinking is meaningful for ecology are also steps of varying degrees of difficulty – ledges, as it were, that make the descent more difficult. The significance of coming-forth holding-in-reserve is usually easily accepted. The meaning of the shifting is also often immediately clear. However, there is the danger that, when superficially assimilated, both of these will quickly be classified in a customary way of thinking – that is, in such a way that they become mixed in with a little atomic physics and some Eastern philosophy (also superficially incorporated) and become a digestible New Age cocktail. Yet far from being a New Age cocktail, it is a Molotov cocktail, an explosive for use against hardened and rigid edifices. This will become clearer as we venture onto the third and most difficult ledge in the descent. The Turning of Being’s Being Forgotten and Its Connection to Ecology As something that is thrown into the world and that in turn throws the world open, Dasein, according to Being and Time, is always already bound up with that in which it dwells; it is numbed by the world and also has the tendency to objectify. This objectifying and numbness are also manifest in everyday language. We want to discuss something confidentially, ‘unter vier Augen’ (literally, under four eyes, or in confidence) – as if the number of eyes mattered. Of course, the process of objectification hardly ever actually ‘counts eyes’ any more; we use the

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expression casually and thoughtlessly – numbed by the world – just as the Americans use the name ‘Corpus Christi’ for a seaport in Texas and then use the name of that city for a nuclear submarine. This being numbed by the world and the natural tendency to objectify belong together with what is called in Being and Time ‘fallenness.’ Numbed by the world, Dasein turns away from its ownmost being-possibility, from the abground of death, and from being in general; being short-sighted, Dasein mistakenly takes itself to be a fixed, present, thinking substance, to be a subject. And objectifying, it clings to whatever encounters it, insisting that it is present in a fixed way. Presumptuous about itself, Dasein measures and calculates everything, while being remains ‘forgotten.’ In other words, modern objectifying subjectivism – with its short-sightedness and presumptuousness, with its flight from death and its ‘forgetfulness of being’ – is traced back in Being and Time to the existential, ‘natural’ tendency to fallenness. Furthermore, the whole historical preparation for objectifying subjectivism – all of Western philosophy since Plato, as a doctrine of mere presence and forgetfulness of being – appears in the light of Being and Time as subject to fallenness. As already noted, Heidegger’s thinking undergoes a ‘turning’ after Being and Time. It moves away from the disclosure of being in Dasein – thus away from the basic determination of truth as existential (i.e., of truth as relative to the being of Dasein; GA 2:300) – towards the selfrevealing and self-concealing truth of being itself. It moves away from the question ‘What is truth?’ to the question of the truth of the ‘is’ – succinctly and using Heidegger’s phrasing: from the deep sway (Wesen) of truth to the truth of the deep swaying (Wesen, understood as a verb)12 (GA 9:201). With this turning of the way to being itself, it is primarily Dasein’s relation to the history of being that is transformed – to the history of being and its transformation and its being forgotten. The history of being is now no longer founded on the fallenness of Dasein; instead, in a reversal, the history of being is experienced as a handing over (Geschick). We are not the makers of history, nor can we simply and arbitrarily leave behind what gets handed down. We are delivered up to what is handed down, our selves are handed over to what gets handed over. But that means we cannot survey the matter fully. The sender of what is handed down remains as hidden as the entire postal service. The handing over of being means this: Being unfolds in a different way every epoch. Being has a different pattern or imprint in each distinct epoch (e.g., being as objectivity in the modern period, or being

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as created by God in the Middle Ages). The epochs of this historical unfolding of being follow one on the other, but their sequence is neither accidentally thrown together nor in any way calculable. It is a ‘free flow’ (WP 29; SD 55) and not a dialectical necessity. The correlation of epochs can suddenly light up for us – for example, the correlation of our present world of production with the being-created-by-God of the Middle Ages; or the correlation of the nature of the computer with the logic that was inspired by Aristotle; or the correlation of television and the modern perspectival approach to world view, with priority given to quiescent seeing in Greek philosophy. Such correlations flash before us, and they are neither merely ‘subjective’ imagination nor open to ‘objectively’ historical proof or disproof. Moreover, with the word epoch Heidegger was not simply thinking of the various eras; rather – in line with the Greek meaning of the word – he understood the various eras also in their character as ‘holding back’ (SD 9). On the one hand the handing over holds back in a certain sense and remains hidden, in favour of what in each case is handed over, by which the epoch in each case is claimed. On the other hand, with what is handed over in each case – with the imprint of being that takes place in each case – being is forgotten in a way that befits each epoch. The handing over of being holds back, through all epochs, with the truth of being. Heidegger experienced the free flow of these withholdings as one that escalates (SD 56). Thus, in the unfolding of Western philosophy, from Plato to Nietzsche, being’s being forgotten – covering over and displacing the truth of being – escalates. Heidegger sees the complete forgetting of being in the own of modern technicity (S 370),13 in what he calls the regime of disposability (Ge-stell: the whole range of positing and positioning), as the gathering of the various ways of putting, positing, producing, self-positing, re-positing, repositioning, to which humans today try to correspond as ones who are placed in ‘positions’ and held there.14 This forgetting of being that has escalated into the extreme in what is own to technicity can now be shown in manifold epochal ‘lines’ (as we did earlier) with reference to world, space, time, language, animal, and thing. Here I will be satisfied to use the example of the epochal line of life. Using a series of catchphrases, I might say (with the Greek playwright Aeschylus) that life means this: to stand in some connection to light, to emerge into light;15 or I might say (with Aristotle and Plato) that it means movement and soul; or I might say (with Descartes) that it means reciprocal action of the psychophysical; or I might say (with Nietzsche) will to power; or (with Freud) drives; or (at the extreme apex

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of the regime of disposability) complex biochemical combustion. The meadow as battlefield in Doutreval’s description shows life in three epochal imprints, with an escalating forgetting of being: will to power, drives, and combustion. In 1949 Heidegger gave four lectures on technicity in Bremen. In the last of these, ‘The Turning,’ he said the following, which is at first very difficult to understand: What is own to the positing of Gestell [the regime of disposability] is the danger. As danger, being turns away from its own [Wesen] into the forgetting of this own – thus simultaneously turning against the truth of what is own to it. This self-turning holds sway in the danger, while not yet being thought. Within what is own to danger is hidden the possibility of a turning, in which the forgetting of being’s deep sway [Wesen] turns in such a way that with this turning the truth of being’s deep sway really re-turns, in the way of owning, into beings. (TK 40)

This turning, the turning of being’s being forgotten, is a turning in the handing over of being. The turning in Heidegger’s pathway of thinking, mentioned earlier, should not be confused with this one – even though that turning in the way of thinking perhaps belongs to this turning and corresponds to it, in the same way as the experience, already explained, of the shift from the ‘progress’ of the objectifying subject to Dasein (i.e., the overture to enowning of being, of time, and of world as fourfold). Thus, as Heidegger indicated in the Bremen lecture, what is hidden in the own of the danger is the fact that the very turn away from the truth of being – in its turning away at the extreme point of the regime of disposability – lets what is forgotten and withdrawn actually come forth. For example, when cybernetics becomes the basic science today and reduces everything that is – life in the meadow, a Celan poem, or the battle against a tanker – equally to a ‘flow of information,’ then perhaps therein the forgotten power and magic of language finally reveals itself. This extreme point or apex carries that possibility. According to Heidegger the positing of the regime of disposability is ‘most extreme forgetting’ and ‘the hint of Ereignis’ (GA 5:373) simultaneously. The regime of disposability is ‘at the same time the photographic negative of enowning’ (S 366), and the regime of disposability is the ‘Janus-face’ (SD 57). The reciprocal provocation of humans and of being that takes place in the regime of disposability, for example, brings us ‘bewildered,

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closer’ (ID 28): originary belonging together of humans and of being, the owning of humans (Ver-eignung), and the owning-over of being in enowning. In their total hopelessness and dreariness, autonomic humans, functioning much like machines, and the autonomic wasteland of concrete, show forth how they en-owningly belong together. According to Heidegger, the positing of the regime of disposability is ‘the selfdissembling enowning of the fourfold’ (GA 4:153). Heidegger’s reference to a possible turning in being’s being forgotten is not a revolutionary manifesto accompanied by a flourish of trumpets. According to Nietzsche it is the quietest words that bring on the storm, thoughts that ‘come on pigeon-feet’ (GA 7:58). In the long run, almost invisible nuances are often decisive in epochal matters. Perhaps an example would work best. In a lecture in Munich in 1953 Heidegger referred to a sentence by the atomic physicist Max Planck: ‘Real is what can be measured.’16 One hears in this sentence a radical formulation of natural science’s reductionism. The green of the meadow is not real; real is the measurable wavelengths of green light. Thus understood, the sentence is a stroke of genius in the way it posits the regime of disposability, a proposition of the most extreme forgetting of being. In his lecture Heidegger quoted the sentence as evidence for the repositioning procedure of modern science, which posits for the sake of certainty. But one can read Max Planck’s sentence in another way. I have tried without success to track down the context of the sentence, and Heidegger does not give a reference. However, in my search I came across a lecture by Planck in which he discussed this question: To what extent does a physical measurement correspond to a ‘real, external world’?17 Embedded in this text, the sentence would refer more to the inseparable connection between measuring and reality and so in a hidden way to perceiving and being, outside of which nothing can be. Clearly the sentence does refer to a catastrophic reduction. The green colour of the grasses, dear Fabienne, is really only a measurable value. Only that is real which can be measured – to hell with the beautiful meadow! But in the second way of reading the sentence, it sounds quite different, more modest and respectful. Real is what can be measured – reality and human measuring belong to each other. Naturally by this second reading the reduction to objectifying measuring must be put into question; and, when heard in this other way, the crux of the sentence is naturally with the measuring, observing subject. Yet: In the second way of reading the sentence, one still hears that eminent connection between perceiving and being; Ge-stell, dear Doutreval, is a hinting of Ereignis.

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I need hardly mention that a possible turning in the way being gets handed over, a turning in the forgetting of being, and thus a handing over that ‘leaves Gestell behind’ (ID 29) would be most important for ecology and the efforts towards a gentler technology. Which leads to the following questions: Are there any signs of such an important turning? Is it coming, or is it not? Or has it already come? And if it has already come – or is about to – is it in time, before the massive explosion that could transform the meadow – all meadows – into a battlefield, perhaps interrupting forever the activity of the praying mantises? Does the turning come soon enough to end the poisoning of the meadowland with cadmium and radioactive cesium? Is the turning quicker than the breeder reactor in Creys-Malville? Heidegger would probably have cautioned against such impatient questions. ‘Perhaps,’ he said in that lecture in Bremen, ‘perhaps we are already standing in the shadow cast in advance of the arrival of this turning. When and how it takes place in the unfolding of being, no one knows. It is also unnecessary to know that. Knowing like that would actually be very destructive for humans’ (TK 40). If a turning takes place in the unfolding of being, that is not possible without humans. It needs us, our reflection and our participation. But on principle we cannot know whether, when, and how a turning happens. To know such would not only be highly destructive for humans; it would also be the end of all pain and all joy – quite similar to our knowing what one day death will be like. To know such would put an end to our dwelling on the earth, since awaiting and not knowing belong to this dwelling. It is for us, here and now, in meditative thinking and in spirited action, to await the turning – without calculating it. Some Leading Notions of the Ecological Movement and Their Connection to Heidegger’s Thinking A few years after the Americans landed on the moon, the Club of Rome published its famous computer predictions, titled ‘The Limits of Growth,’ which showed that if things continued the way they had been, ‘spaceship earth’ would, in effect, die. Better researched and even more depressing was the study commissioned by President Jimmy Carter, which appeared in 1980 under the title Global 2000 Study. Both studies are honest appraisals whose predictions, however cautious, are deeply unsettling. However, since they take the basic approach of constructing ‘world-models’ or ‘spaceship earth,’ they also give weight

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to perceptions that the world is a machine. Spaceship earth and the world model correspond to a world view that objectifies subjectivism and are snares along the descent from the throne of master and owner of nature. Should we not be questioning this sort of objectifying reductionism? Which, by the way, can be detected in many ideas held by the ecological movement. For example, however sensible it is to conserve energy, the very concept of energy is reductionist and ambiguous, because it reduces the light and warmth of the sun, the waterfall along the mountain stream, the roaring of the wind, the burning of wood, and the power of the horse … reduces this whole world to kilowatt hours. It is worth noting that the word energy – which was coined in the eighteenth century – has its roots in the Aristotelian term energeia, that is, the ‘work-character of beings.’ Just as problematic is the economic reduction of all beings to monetary values. Certainly the proposals for economic decentralization and for the development of a ‘gentler’ technology made by the British economist E.F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) are as relevant today as ever. Certainly the provocative theses of an Ivan Illich are in many ways highly pertinent. And probably an ecological economy will some day develop, presumably in the direction of James Robertson’s ‘alternatives worth living.’ Despite all this, one cannot overlook that an ecological accounting still reduces things to monetary values and that many of these authors’ concepts are characterized by the economy of objectifying subjectivism, by the world view of the shopowners – as, for example, with the concept of ‘qualitative growth.’ The world view of biology, too, has shaped many concepts and thought patterns of the ecological movement, rooting them in an objectifying subjectivism. The term environment (Umwelt), as in ‘environmental protection,’ provides one example. The only thing this concept has in common with what is called in Being and Time the most close-athand, domestic, surrounding world of humans is the name. The environment meant by biology is the surroundings in whose ‘mi-lieu,’ in whose middle-site, the organism resides. The opposition between organism and its environment – indeed, the concept of organism itself – corresponds to a characteristic amalgamation of machine and subject. The organism and its environment – for example, the praying mantis and the meadow – are in this way given a mechanical explanation. In this way the organism is seen from the human vantage point, anthropomorphically, as subject. Moreover, the natural sciences’ reductionism and anthropomorphic interpretions of life are basic to the theory of

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evolution. The natural sciences ‘reduce’ living creatures – for example, to bits of matter programmed by nucleic acids – and use the results as ‘proof’ that humans and apes are closely related, whereas apes and baobab trees are only distantly related. When the theory of evolution reduces all subjects to the products of anthropomorphic interpretation, this consigns all of nature to a struggle for existence – in evolutionary terms, to a struggle for survival of the fittest. In addition to this, evolutionary biologists have bestowed on themselves a grandiose perspective of billions of years, as if they were astronauts looking down on the earth and the entire universe. Recently the theory of evolution has merged with geology, and with theories of the physical origins of the universe, to become a unified, scientific theory of origins stretching from the big bang to the present day – and that theory ‘talks’ like Doutreval, who acts as if he had been present when dragonflies first came into being. All ecological thought patterns that proceed by way of evolution remind us of the hubris and objectifying subjectivism of the ‘astronaut’ perspective on evolutionary biology. Here I am thinking of works like A Planet Is Being Plundered by Herbert Gruhl and The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity by Konrad Lorenz – and also of the proponents of the so-called evolutionary theory of knowledge, which traces our present ecological mistakes back to the circumstances in which we evolved and expects us to be rescued by our own biological self-enlightenment. Even Heidegger’s questioning of the biological world view makes an appeal to ‘life’ – which partly explains why he has garnered a following in today’s ecological movement, much like Albert Schweitzer did before him with his ‘respect for life.’ One should at least ask what ‘life’ actually means. Also worth questioning are those ecological concepts that refer to humanity as animal rationale, the ‘rational animal.’ The rational animal has needs that it is reasonable to satisfy. Thus those concepts that proceed in any way from the needs-satisfaction of the subject – whether they are deduced from Nietzsche, Freud, or Marx – belong here. Am I merely satisfying a need when I quench my thirst with water? Am I really just addressing an H20 deficit inside me? Or is this situation of thirst, however pressing it may be, a language event that opens up a world, which objectifying subjectivism then reduces to a disturbance in the metabolism of a rational animal? Anyone who has ever been thirsty on a hike knows how often he or she was ‘spoken to’ by the absent spring. No less fundamental are the questions raised by those thought patterns that ecology connects with human progress and

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the emancipation of humans into a broader autonomy. The eco-socialist is just as exposed to the question of the modern, autonomic subject who believes in steady progress as the green-conservative is to the question of the world view of biology. The autonomic, anthropomorphic standpoint of the subject leaves its traces – for example, in the writings of Erich Fromm, who calls for a radical humanism. It is no accident that Fromm also understood the word being exclusively in the sense of the being of humans. As impressive as the contrasting investigation of human behaviour in terms of ‘having’ and ‘being’ may be, the differentiation must still be made between it and the question of the meaning of being. Explications of the leading ideas in ecology have again and again collided with their roots in the objectifying subjectivism of modern times. Many manifestations of the ecological movement have quite different roots in the historical unfolding of being – which is especially obvious when one examines the so-called materialism of the modern era. Thus Schumacher’s rejection of materialism can refer us to the levels of being in medieval Christian Scholasticism; the rejection of materialism in anthroposophy can refer us to the tendency of Platonism to downplay the sensual and earthly in favour of the supersensible. It is unnecessary at this point to delve any deeper into this; suffice it to say that perhaps those ecologists who fall headlong into the fixed schema of a Christian or an anthroposophical world view must enter into the question of the epochal enigmas of their world view, if they do not want dogmatically to shield themselves from a dialogue with non-believers. For anthroposophy such enigmas include, besides Platonism, the modern theory of knowledge and the affinity to the theory of evolution. At the same time, we must ask whether an ecological ethics that relies solely on human reason, education, asceticism, and self-knowledge, and thus makes everything dependent on humans (as does the anthropocentric way of thinking that holds sway today) is sufficient – even while it clings to ‘higher values’ or to new ecological values; for all values are posited and appraised by humans. Objectifying subjectivism is obvious in those ecological writings that reify history as a discharging process. For example, when Joseph Huber – referring back to Nikolai Kondratieff and Joseph Schumpter – discovers a new law of ‘long waves’ of economic high and low tides in the history of the industrial era, history itself is seen almost as a machine. Similarly, the fashionable talk of ‘changing paradigms’ sometimes reminds one of developments in computer programming. At this point

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it is useful to reflect on how essential epochal connections cannot be reified. It is also useful to reflect on how much the particular reifying is done within the horizon of the particular subject. For example, within the horizon of today’s politics of power, one speaks of the history of power in ancient China or in pre-Columbian Mexico. I could refer to other leading notions within the ecological movement, but I will limit myself to the ones I have already mentioned. There is only one more that must be stressed, because it belongs to that basic science that philosophy has let loose and that runs rampant today in all the sciences: cybernetics. It is the guiding idea of the ‘networked system’ that Frederic Vester first posited. Just like the concept of information (already mentioned), so too can cybernetics and its formulae of control ring, homeostasis, and networking in linear and non-linear connections, with positive and negative feedback, be laid on the same Procrustean bed. Cybernetics has the appearance of ‘holistic’ thinking, and Vester by developing it has done a great service to the ecological movement. That said, the networked system hides within it the same objectifying subjectivism and is far from the ‘reference-connections’ that unfold in language. That is why I am also sceptical of Gregory Bateson when he hopes that with the advent of cybernetics a new, more human, and more ecological era is approaching. The ‘cybernetic pantheism’ that Bateson’s Ecology of Mind proclaims is chained to the spirit of control technology. Something similar is true of the hopes that have been placed in modern theoretical physics – for example, by Fritjof Capra and Ilya Prigogine. When modern physics contradicts, for example, the classical conception of three-dimensional space, with time separate from space, or when it undermines the concept of a fixed object – or even when it works towards a unified theory of all powers of nature, and thus towards a ‘holistic world view’ – this does not change the fact that measuring, calculating, and observing are still going on and that the world is still being reduced to a world-formula. Herbert Pietschmann announced a ‘new era,’ and Fritjof Capra, a ‘turning point.’ But does this mean that the ecological movement is entering the thinking of the turning and thus also the enigmas in the epochs of the history of being? With that I end this stroll through the leading ideas in the ecological movement. I have only touched on the vast ecological literature.18 I would also point out that I have not at all intended to excoriate the ecological literature. Indeed, I count myself an active member of the ecological movement, and I agree with many of the analyses expressed

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by the authors referred to here. I also detect in their works a nascent openness to ecological attitudes of modesty, respect, connectedness, and withdrawal from mastery. This stroll has dealt only with the snares that threaten the necessary rethinking. I end this essay by considering some objections that have been made to attempts at bringing together ecology and Heidegger’s thinking. Critical Objections From time to time the conceptual game of theory and praxis is brought against this attempt. From the philosophical point of view, the so-called practical or political dimension of the attempt is rejected, whereas from the ecological point of view the so-called theoretical, philosophical dimension is rejected. But deeper reflection and decisive action need not contradict each other. Those who shield themselves from the political consequences may one day be confronted with the fact that no decision is still a decision, and one that can have consequences. And those who believe that they need not bother with thinking fail to recognize that ‘no philosophy’ (e.g., a cybernetic world view) is also a philosophy and that it has consequences. The critique of Heidegger’s fundamental notions with reference to their significance for ecology usually begins with those which most refuse to be amalgamated into a New Age cocktail – namely, the history of being and the turning in being’s being forgotten. So I want here to limit myself to the critique of thinking in terms of the historical unfolding of being. Up till now the following has come to me regarding such a critique: The psychological question: What is Heidegger’s motive? For example, we have handed down to us the following remark in Heidegger’s history of being from Karl Jaspers: ‘The fundamentally uncritical attitude in the unfolding of this whole insight in the knowledge of the whole history of Western philosophy, which is both recognized (as history) and at the same time overcome by one, single chap.’19 The Marxist question: What is Heidegger’s motive? Heidegger’s interpretation of the escalating forgetting of being is taken as the theory of an intimidated petty bourgeois, according to Ernst Bloch – and even as a reactionary, ‘commissioned’ distraction from socialistic commitment.20 The bending of the history of being back to Dasein. Klaus Held bases the thinking in terms of the historical unfolding of being, and its connecting unconcealing and withdrawal, in the disclosure of Dasein, thought

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(in Heraclitus’ terms) as ‘oppositional’ disclosure of Dasein in its attunement. In a certain sense he pits the earlier (expanded) Heidegger against the later Heidegger.21 The comparison with Christian salvation history. The theologian Alfred Jäger made this comparison very poignantly: Instead of the Jewish people, Heidegger chose the Greek people; and instead of Abraham, he chose the pre-Socratics. The Fall takes place in Plato; and ever since, the historical unfolding of being has been racing to an apocalyptic end. Only Hölderlin, the suffering servant of God, like Jesus, preserves the whole and carries the sufferings of his time. The precursor Friedrich Nietzsche was as little understood as John the Baptist. Did Heidegger see himself, asks Jäger, as something of a new Messiah?22 Doubt about the compelling force of history. Werner Marx asks this critical question: What kind of necessity actually determined the choice of philosophers that Heidegger dealt with, thus determining the course of his history of being?23 Basically, all of these objections are bound up in the last one mentioned, that of doubt as to the compelling force of history. I would like now simply to make a remark. Presumably one has to reflect again and again on what understanding of time determines how one deals with the history of being. Is it the ex-static, three-dimensional time opened up by Heidegger’s thinking, or the one-dimensional time axis? Do we understand history as objectifiable course of events, or as insight into the past and as reaching-forth of such insights through Dasein? In his essay on the Anaximander-fragment in 1946, Heidegger offered this thoughtprovoking sentence: ‘The ek-static character of Dasein, however, is our primary experience of correspondence to the epochal character of being’ (GA 5:338). Our primary experience of correspondence to the epochal history of being is the ecstatic character of Dasein, with its historical character. For example, what one calls our ‘biography’ is primary experience. Here, perhaps, for once my own profession can help us a little. Even the biography is not an objectifiable course of events. In a psychotherapeutic dialogue, a look into the past can happen: a biographical connection lights up, here and now. It is not subjective imagination, nor is it open to objective proof or disproof. And one cannot nail it down; already tomorrow we might see things in a totally different way. ‘The primary experience of correspondence’ of biography to the history of being perhaps offers a hint for understanding the history of being. Connections in the historical unfolding of being also light up, here and now – and neither are they subjective, nor are they objectively provable or

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disprovable. We can see them or not see them, here in Europe, now at the end of the twentieth century. But ‘no philosophy of history’ is also a philosophy of history. Jäger may inveigh against Heidegger’s history of being as messianic, but we could just as well call it ‘stricken,’ struck, struck by lightning, here and now. It is struck by the abruptly flashing connection of the positing of the regime of disposability in technicity with Western philosophy, struck also by the original that hides in Greek poetizing and rethinking. Other interpretations of history that are less stricken still have their hidden thorn – for example, a belief in progress such as that of Teilhard de Chardin, or the maintenance of the smirking complaint that there is nothing new under the sun – in other words, the elimination of finitude. The hidden thorn is the thorn of death. In short, we can see the connections in the historical unfolding of being, or not; we can follow along the pathway of thinking the historical unfolding of being, or not – there is no greater compelling on earth. Perhaps I have been able to show that the proximity of Heidegger’s thinking to ecology rests not only on the play of words in eco-logy (Wohn-Sage; dwelling-saying). Perhaps it has also become clearer what Heidegger said during an interview in Der Spiegel: It is my conviction that a turning can come about only from out of the same place in the world where the modern technical world has emerged – and that it cannot take place by an acceptance of Zen Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world. This rethinking needs the help of the European tradition and a new appropriation of it. Thinking is transformed only through a thinking that has the same origin and destiny.24

Is a turning in preparation? Will our dwelling once again be poetic? In any case, until 1976 there lived in Freiburg im Breisgau a thinking, poetizing eco-logist. Translated by Kenneth Maly

NOTES * This is a slightly revised version of a lecture given in the Studium Generale of the University of Freiburg on 6 July 1987. The essay appeared in the original German as ‘Heideggers Denken und die Ökologie,’ Heidegger Studies 6 (1990): 43–66. The translation presented here has been updated

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Hanspeter Padrutt and slightly altered from the one that appeared in Ladelle McWhorter, ed., Heidegger and the Earth (Kirksville: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1992). All information in the notes is provided by the author except what appears in brackets, which is from the translator.

1 Friedrich Hölderlin, Samtliche Werke. Kritische Textausgabe, ed. D.E. Sattler (Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand Verlag, 1984), 9:26. 2 Hanspeer Padrutt, Der epochale Winter (Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1984, 1990), 30f. 3 Maxence van der Meersch, Leib und Seele (Frankfurt am Main: Ullsein Verlag, 1957), 277ff. 4 Padrutt, Der epochale Winter, 200–12. 5 Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, ‘Die Bremer Freunde,’ in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger, ed. Günther Neske (Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1977), 189. 6 [zuvorkommende Zurückhaltung: literally, ‘the forthcoming holding-back’ or ‘forthcoming holding-in-reserve.’ The phrase says (a) how thinking itself, as it emerges or comes forth, ‘holds back’ from naive prejudice or rash theory, from conditionings and assumptions, and (b) how being itself comes forth even as it holds back, in reserve. The phrase intimates the revealingconcealing that is being’s deep sway – with the strength of its own imaging of coming forth and holding back. I have translated zuvorkommende Zurückhaltung as ‘forthcoming holding-in-reserve.’ It takes place in thinking, in Dasein, and deepest of all in the deep sway that is being as Ereignis.] 7 Padrutt, Der epochale Winter, 128. 8 Ibid., 166, 327–45. 9 [In ordinary German, da means ‘here’ or ‘there.’ In Heidegger’s thinking the word da indicates the ‘open expanse’ in which one finds oneself. ‘Being there’ means ‘being open to or being there’ in that open region. Thus Da always has an ecstatic character. Padrutt’s essay stresses this ‘open expanse of the Da’ as it works with Heidegger’s thinking. (I have chosen to leave this word Da untranslated.) In ordinary German, Dasein means ‘existence.’ In Heidegger’s thinking, from Being and Time onward, it is a way of saying (1) being-in-the-world and (2) being in the opening out (expanse) in which being itself emerges – or in which beings emerge as their very unfolding or emerging. (In more ‘usual’ English, this phenomenon might be called ‘the process of coming forth,’ as in: The wildflower’s bud comes forth into bloom – emerges, unfolds, in its coming forth.) Thus, Dasein is the word for human existence in its own and most proper way of being – as what is own to Dasein, that is,

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standing-out in the opening unfolding (of being itself). As such, the word Dasein describes the fundamental comportment or relationship that ‘humans’ have – to the world and then to being as emergence – as ‘ec-static.’ This names the fundamental shift, in Heidegger’s thinking, away from subjectivity and its objectifying, to the always already ‘there’ relatedness that cannot be objectified. Since this word has been used in English for more than fifty years now, in translating this essay I have used the word Dasein – seeing it now, as it were, as an English word.] 10 Cf. Padrutt, Der epochale Winter, esp. 17–18, 123–7, 138, 141. 11 Cf. ibid., 287–325. This book contains an additional bibliography on Heidegger’s understanding of language. [It is perhaps time to reflect on how to translate Heidegger’s Ereignis into English. A long time ago – in boundary 2 4 (Winter 1976) – Heidegger scholar and translator Albert Hofstadter suggested ‘enownment’ (cf. Albert Hofstadter, ‘Enownment,’ in William V. Spanos, ed., Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature: Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics, ed. William V. Spanos [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979], 17–37). He grounded this decision in the knowledge that Heidegger wants ereignen to say its connection to eigen: own – to make one’s own, to be own to, the owning work as such. Hofstadter quotes Heidegger to say how we must simply experience this eignen, to experience how humans and being are ‘en-owned’ (ge-eignet) to one another. Hofstadter: das Ereignis is the letting-belong-together, the one befitting the other – of being and time, humans and being, the fourfold. In order to do this, he states: ‘At the center of das Ereignis is own’ (ibid., 29). And: ‘the most literal possible translation of das Ereignis … en-, -own, and -ment: enownment … the letting-be-own-toone-another … the letting be married of any two or more … Enownment is not their belonging, but what lets their belonging be’ (ibid.). This ‘own’ has nothing to do with ‘selfish’ possession but everything to do with the work or dynamic ‘by which the different members of the world are brought into belonging to and with one another and are helped to realize themselves and each other in realizing this belonging’ (cf. A. Hofstadter, in his Introduction to his translation of some of Heidegger’s essays, published in English under the title Poetry, Language, Thought [New York: Harper & Row, 1975], xx). One could perhaps say what is happening in Ereignis as ‘the dynamic of owning.’ Whether one could translate the German word in that manner – that is perhaps doubtful! Ereignis: A most difficult word to deal with in translation. This is the case primarily because the word, as thought by Heidegger, takes thinking

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deeper into the ongoing question of Heidegger’s thinking: being, aletheia, logos, anwesendes Anwesen, emergent emerging, emergence – such that the German word unfolds deeper than and beyond anything it ‘usually’ means in German. Thus the translator has first to think all the way into what the German word is saying – only to be faced with the question: What does it ‘mean’ in English? Ereignis is the joining together of humans and being in a belongingtogether that befits humans and being for one another in their deep sway of being, in what is own to each and own to the befitting. Ereignis is the region, self-oscillating, through which humans and being attain to one another in each one’s ‘own’ owning dynamic as well as the ‘enowning’ of their countering sway. Ereignis is the withdrawing-preserving region that grants being. Ereignis is both the impetus for being to emerge and the withdrawal that keeps hidden. Ereignis, finally, is the deep sway of unfolding that is being as emergence. Certain English words intimate something of this: belonging, fitting and befitting, and the very recent word ‘enowning.’ (Historically one has seen the German Ereignis come into English as ‘appropriation.’ Responding to what enowns me in Heidegger’s thinking, I respectfully stay away from the word appropriation. This for two reasons: first, as all words that derive from Latin tend to do, the word carries a certain abstraction with it, thus cancelling out or hiding the dynamic engagement aspect of what Heidegger is saying with the word; and second, the word carries connotations of ownership/possession and of something passing from subject to object, or vice versa.) Heidegger with this word attempts to think/say being as emergence in a non-dual way. It is hard for any English word to accomplish this. (Note that the word in German is shocking to native speakers as well, such that they also have to make a shift in their thinking in order to understand what is going on here.) Things emerge into their own, into what is own to them; humans come into their own as they respond to the owning dynamic in being as emergence; being as emergence enowns Dasein – all of these dynamics belong to the matter being said by ‘enowning.’ In thinking the dynamic here beyond subject-object and within the circularity – rather than linearity or hierarchy – the word enowning says all of this.] 12 [For Heidegger, Wesen points to a dynamic that is much more and deeper than the usual, static ‘essence’ or ‘nature.’ It needs to be heard in its verbal sense of emerging, unfolding, deep swaying. Thus Wesen becomes Wesung, a participial way of unfolding, emerging, or deep swaying. In this sense the Wesen der Technik is the deep sway of technicity, that whole range of

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relationship whereby positing and disposing and commoditization is the primary way that ‘things’ get dealt with. One could also say that what is own to things in the deep sway of technicity is that they lose what is own to them as things (the thing, gathering) and are reduced to disposables and commodities. In this sense what is own to (Wesen) is also what enowns in this dynamic (ereignet).] 13 [In ordinary German, Technik means both ‘technology’ and ‘technique’ – even though the word Technologie fits in here also. The English words technique and technology carry a similar ambiguity. As used in this essay, Technik does not mean the machinery or instrument of technology (as in: ‘We do not have the right technology for that job.’). Nor does it mean strategy (as in: ‘If I knew the right technique, I would do it.’). Rather, for Heidegger the discussion of Technik and das Wesen der Technik has to do with a way of revealing – that is, a way in which being shows itself in a particular epoch. In this essay I have translated Technik here with the English word ‘technicity.’ The matter here is das Wesen der Technik: what is own to technicity.] 14 Cf. Padrutt, Der epochale Winter, 133ff. [The German word here is Ge-stell. The word is used by Heidegger to suggest something of the totality or ‘whole range’ of something – as in Ge-birge, the whole range of mountains. Gestell comes from stellen, to place, put, pose, posit, in the meaning of establish and make firm. Heidegger says the word Ge-stell for the sum total of posing–positing–establishing of the calculative thinking of ‘technicity.’ Ge-stell means the whole range of positing and disposing that characterizes the way in which Technik unfolds. In Ge-stell things are pre-established (posited in advance), for the sake of their disposability, without letting them appear or emerge in all their disclosing possibilities. Thus in this regime of disposability, ‘things’ get reduced to disposables – and no longer appear or work as ‘things.’ In Ge-stell there is the provoking that forces things to be merely calculable for the sake of disposing – and ultimately for further disposal – and losing their whole sway as things in that very disposal of Ge-stell. No single English word or words can render all of what the word Gestell mirrors and says. It is often translated as ‘enframing.’ While this English term somehow reflects the gathering and collectedness of the German prefix Ge-, ‘enframing’ fails to point out the dimension of stellen in Ge-stell: positing, putting, placing, disposing. Here I translate Ge-stell as ‘regime of disposability,’ using the word ‘regime’ to say the whole range or ‘system’ or ‘guiding paradigm’ of disposability, positing, setting up in advance of letting things be things.]

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15 Aeschylus, The Persians, 1.299. 16 Heidegger, ‘Wissenschaft und Besinnung,’ in GA 7:58. 17 Max Planck, ‘Positivismus und reale Außenwelt,’ in Vorträge und Erinnerungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), 228ff. 18 Cf. Padrutt, Der epochale Winter, 11–32. 19 Karl Jaspers, Notizen zu Martin Heidegger, ed. Hans Saner (Zürich: R. Piper, 1984), Notiz Nr. 238, 254. 20 Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978), 3:1605. 21 Klaus Held, Heraklit, Parmenides und der Anfang von Philosophie und Wissenschaft (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 124. 22 Alfred Jäger, Gott. Nochmals Martin Heidegger (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Verlag, 1978), 359, 438–40. 23 Werner Marx, Heidegger und die Tradition (Hamburg: Feliz Meiner Verlag, 1980), 171, 248. 24 Heidegger, ‘Spiegel-Gespräch mit Martin Heidegger vom 23.9.1966,’ Der Spiegel 23 (1976): 214.

3 Earth-Thinking and Transformation kenneth maly

Let me begin by suggesting two images of how human beings live, or experience being alive: • A way of connectedness and expansion, in which one experiences oneself and the world as non-separate relatedness or connectedness, expansive and expanding, in which one experiences an inner spaciousness that expands beyond one’s skin and oneself and includes a deep experience of being one with all life, and • A way of disconnectedness and contraction, in which one experiences oneself and the world as separate, discrete, isolated, and isolated, in which one experiences an inner contracting, a self-contracting. Most of us in the West have basically learned to live in the second way – that of isolation and separation – and to rely on this way (of subjective ego, self-interest, and self-contraction) for survival. This limited and limiting mode has gotten us and the earth into serious trouble. We could marshal an abundance of evidence that this is so; but I do not wish here to focus on the trouble even though it is important and useful to be clear about it. Rather, I want to focus on connectedness, relatedness as such, and self-expanding, in order to get a sense of their possibility – what it would feel like and how it might benefit all of us: humans and earth. By such a focusing, we in our thinking encounter connectedness as the possibility of the way things are, of the way we are. The way of connectedness-expansion-relatedness can become attractive and lay claim to our deepest thinking. Within this claim a new or renewed experience of connectedness becomes possible. Of course, the struggle continues

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until we let go of separateness and experience connectedness at its core, self-expanding relatedness. Here I want to explore the image of earth as an image of this connectedness. In thinking earth as connectedness, I want to explore how responding to the claim made on us by connectedness leads to a transformation in our experience and understanding of ourselves and the earth. How to understand earth? What does the notion of earth do for our thinking? How does it do anything for our thinking? What does it yield or give – for thinking today, on or in an earth in crisis? I offer this thought: taken in its deep saying and its openings, the experience of earth yields transformation. Put another way: to focus one’s thinking on earth recycles the energy that flows through the earth – and through humans as part of the earth – and transmutes human energy such that we come to know our being one with the earth, or more generally: our being connected, connectedness as such, interbeing. (It is my contention that only this experience of connectedness will save the earth – and us with it. Any attempt, however grandiose and with however much commitment to its cause, will fall short if it does not have at its core this transformation of human experience in which human thinking knows connectedness as such and itself within that.) So my question is this: How does earth-thinking bring about human transformation? I want to suggest that experiencing earth leads to transformation (‘alchemy’) such that we humans then deal with the earth in an altered way. I want to explore the notion of earth in its core meaning and how that notion, when dealt with in a far-reaching thinking that goes beyond/under the usual Western rationalism, leads of itself to a deep transformation in human experience. This transformation then bears directly and essentially on what is own to human existence. As a prelude, I offer three hints as to what is meant here: 1 Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass says: Logic and sermons never convince. The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.1

2 Barry Lopez in his introduction to Arctic Dreams says: What, I wondered, had compelled me to bow to a horned lark: How do

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people imagine the landscape they find themselves in? How does the land shape the imagination of people who dwell in it?2

3 Martin Heidegger says: It is one thing just to use the earth; it is quite another thing to receive the blessing of the earth and to become at home in the law of this reception, in order to shepherd the mystery of being and to pay attention to the inviolability of the possible. (UK 60)

The path of my presentation has four stages. The ‘final’ stage is transformation itself, the alchemy or transmutation that takes place within human beings in a deep thinking-saying experience of the earth.3 This final stage includes a brief look at the ‘results’ – at the ‘look’ things have if and when transformation takes place. But there are three stages on the way to that stage: 1 Enlarging the notion of earth 2 Understanding one’s place on/of the earth 3 Learning to dwell. Stage 1: Enlarging the notion of earth, earth enlarged, earth as shelter, earth as image for the web of interconnectedness, earth as the place of deep connections First, some general images: earth, land, soil, nature, the growth/movement of life, the sustaining power of all that is, the dark, the womb, the shadow, hidden rhizomes. Then, the question: What is it – the earth? What is called earth? What all is called earth? What does earth (earth-thinking) call for? What calls for earth-thinking? (The earth, of course!) What is own to earth-thinking? What happens in owning-earth-thinking? What does earth-thinking enable or make possible? What is earth? Then playing with words:

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The Greek word [er]: era: earth eradze: upon the earth erao: I love, long for, desire ero: desire, longing, being drawn toward ero: I knit, tie Gathering up: Earth and the deep desire/drive in humans (the erotic) is to be with the earth. (Note: The more usual Greek word for earth is gaia: earth, ground, soil, land. Gaia: goddess and spouse of Uranus, sky.) The German word: die Erde: earth, opposite of heaven irdisch: earthy (as in wine) erden: to bind with the earth beerdigen: to bury, to put back into the earth; to let be part of earth again Gathering up: Erde, earth is being connected The English word earth/ert: ground come down to earth earthbound, earthen earthiness earthworm: burrows in soil, makes movement, makes earth, breathes life into dead soil, makes it live, works for re-connections earthy: simple/natural, hearty, unashamed earth as land: IE lendh: open land FR landee: heath, unusable moorland, wild place G landau: land and water, water meadow, wetlands Slavic ledo: wasteland Gathering up: Earth and being grounded, connected; earth and land, wild land, open land, unpossessed land (the moor) earth as soil: IE su: to produce young (soil as fertile) Latin solum: floor; solium: throne IE sed: sit settle – nest, nestle, seat, cathedral soil = where we stand, where we settle where nutrients are where bacteria are harboured where rhizomes are enmeshed

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soil = bridge between living (roots) and dead (minerals) (But as place where we settle, is not all of it living?) soil = meeting place, takes weather and rocks and re-members them into trees and salmon earth as roots: Rut, Wort, Wurze: part of the plant below the ground (in soil/earth) that holds the plant (grounds it) and nourishes it (drawing water and minerals from the soil). Gathering up: Deep-earth-thinking retrieves our connectedness and all connectedness, retrieves this in our roots, being own to and in the earth = soil. Humus, human. earth as natura/nature: birthing process coming to be emergent emerging process of growth and movement earth = natura, movement, process, emergence itself: What is is in becoming, is energy rather than matter. Gathering up: Earth is not substance or static material substratum, is not particulate matter. Rather, earth is the name for emerging/movement/growth itself: energy, syn-ergy. Greek physis: rising and breaking through emergent emerging opening unfolding ongoing erupting into presence that goes back into itself Hölderlin calls earth ‘a mighty fire.’4 Heidegger says of physis: Being opens itself up for the Greeks as physis. The sway of coming forth and sojourning as such is at the same time the shining [radiant] appearance. The word stems phy- [English] and phu- [Greek] say the same. Pha- is the coming forth even as it reposes in itself, is phainesthai, the flashing up, self-showing, appearing.5

For Hölderlin, nature means what Heidegger means by phusis: Hölderlin calls nature das Heilige, the holy – the all-living, wholly alive. Hesiod’s words come to mind: gods are ‘sprung out from earth.’6 earth as dark/womb/mother: the shadow (our double) (Soil, the place of life, is dark; womb is dark.)

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In Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk quotes Lauren the poet: ‘We need to dream the dark as process, and dream the dark as change, to create the dark in a new image. Because the dark creates us.’ (Reading everywhere earth for dark it sounds this way: We need to dream the earth as process, and dream the earth as change, to create the earth in a new image. Because the earth creates us.) I quote further from Starhawk, but using the word earth in each instance where she has dark: The earth: all that we are afraid of, all that we don’t want to see – fear, anger, sex, grief, death, the unknown. The turning earth: change. The velvet earth: skin soft in the night, the stroke of flesh on flesh, touch, joy, mortality. Hecate’s birth-giving earth: seeds are planted underground, the womb is earth, and life forms itself anew in hidden places [earth].7

Gathering up: Earth is image for deep instinctual life, rich re-emergence of our primordial/primitive/wild elements, describing our innermost needs/desires/yearnings (eros) – image yet again for connectedness. So, when we talk of earth, we are talking of mountains, cornfields, animals, and caves; but we are also talking of wholeness, wildness, enactment of relatedness, connectedness as such, interbeing. The issues of the environment, endangered species, and wildlife management are in some sense impoverished until and unless we human beings think in this deep sense – think earth as image for connectedness, for the root-domain outside ourselves that we are a part of but do not manage/control. The very act of civilization takes us away from this enactment of connectedness. Hence our yearning for wildness. Before moving on to Stage 2, let me offer a few images to flesh out and gather up this enlarged-earth image: 1 Lovelock, in Gaia: A New Look at Life, proposed that we view the earth, not as dead, but as a set of homeostatic life systems. In a more recent article, Jim Swan writes: If the earth is alive, we might best seek harmony with the earth through communicating with it … According to the theory that the earth is alive, sacred places might be seen as ‘organs’ of the living earth with a special purpose of helping us learn to live in mutual cooperation.8

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We might say: The earth itself is in need of this transformation, this enlarged earth. 2 The Okanogan of the Northwest see the earth as a living, breathing being, the mother of all: Old-One, or Chief, made the earth out of a woman, and said she would be the mother of all the people. Thus the earth was once a human being, and she is alive yet; but she has been transformed, and we cannot see her in the same way we can see a person. Nevertheless she has legs, arms, head, heart, flesh, bones, and blood. The soil is her flesh; the trees and vegetation are her hair; the rocks, her bones; and the wind is her breath. She lies spread out, and we live on her. She shivers and contracts when cold, and expands and perspires when hot. When she moves, we have an earthquake. Old-One, after transforming her, took some of her flesh and rolled it into balls, as people do with mud or clay. These he transformed into the beings of the ancient world, who were people, and yet at the same time animals.9

3 Aldo Leopold observes: Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil.10

4 Heidegger writes: All things of the earth, the earth itself in its wholeness, flow together into a mutual accord. But this confluence is not an effacing of their outlines. Rather the stream of the expanding boundary, at rest within itself, bounds/holds everything that unfolds into presence within its presencing. (UK 48)

5 A most striking image of this enlarged earth emerges in an ancient Meso-American mythos of the dead. As a human prepares to leave the earth, she or he is told by the one of medicine power: The gods have ‘provided you a base … a seat. For there is our common home, there is our common place of perishing; there, there is an enlarging of the earth where formerly it had ended.’11

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In the dominant tradition, the normal construction of our notion of earth carries with it the notion of something static, a definite place: material, inanimate place of no action/movement. When we think and say earth in its possibility – emerging from language and from emerging earth dynamic – we are participating in earth as unfolding, the unfolding of a new, enlarged earth: living connectedness, emergent moving, erupting, opening out. Earth-thinking in its richness and depth! Stage 2: Hearing earth as sacred land, as place, as the place where one lives – sacred land as the specific place where one is at home, lives more deeply If we re-enact earth as living connectedness, then we are called to see our place (being placed) in/on the earth in a transformed, enlarged way. We need, then, to re-inhabit our place. Inhabit is from the Latin habitare = to dwell. To re-inhabit is to relearn dwelling. Place is from the Greek platus: wide, broad, even (plateau) – then: widening out, spacing out, experiencing spaciousness as such, broadening out into connectedness itself. To make a place: to open it up, for dwelling; let the open hold sway, which in turn lets beings emerge and come to presence, in which, in turn, humans learn to dwell. To make a place: to give things (life, plants, houses) the possibility of belonging in this connectedness, this organic whole. If this happens, if things begin to belong in the connectedness (to be earthy), then place is achieved or granted, place is sustained, sheltered within the connectedness, place itself opens the region in that it gathers what is in the place into their belonging-together. Therefore, place is what we have when we let the interconnectedness, the interbeing, be opened up; and place allows the connectedness as such to be opened up. A sense of place is a sense of being grounded, ‘down to earth.’ Until recently all humans had living patterns by which they were settled down (Latin sed, solium, seat, settle, nest, nestle) in a place, took responsibility for it, and were attentive to it. For us to re-inhabit our place is to settle in, take responsibility for, and pay attention to where we are. The ecological benefit of this rootedness, Gary Snyder says, ‘is that people take care of a place because they realize that they are going to live there

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for a thousand years.’12 Beyond that is a spiritual benefit, the unfolding of a ‘spirit of what it is to be there,’ speaking of a ‘direct sense of relation to the “land.”’13 By being in place, we get the largest sense of community, biotic interconnectedness. So let me offer an image of a journey. Our number-one task – if we are to follow up on what we have come to know here – is to find our place, to re-inhabit it. And this place is named sacred. (‘The first thing to do is to choose a sacred place to live in,’ Tahirussawichi of the Pawnees tells us.) First, we tune in to the forms of consciousness that abound in the non-human world. With that attuning, our own experience broadens/ expands (place: broadening) as we touch and are touched by this nonhuman consciousness in a place. Then we achieve and hold to health (i.e., keep in balance) as this energy moves through our place. Having taken all those steps, our own knowing is learning how these forces relate one to the other, how they are connected and we with them. Peter Berg writes: ‘Re-inhabitation refers to the spirit of living-in-place within a region … It is simply becoming fully alive in and with a place.’14 Re-inhabiting my place means learning from the place what its needs are, re-discovering what species belong in my place, learning how the watershed is part and parcel of my place, this sacred place.15 Re-inhabiting one’s place is also spiritually necessary: Non-human beings in their place are essential to human well-being, to the well-being of the earth, the dark, connectedness as such. Stage 3: Learning to dwell, dwelling as it occurs within the fourfold of earth–sky–mortals–divinities (i.e., the hidden mystery that pulls us beyond any measure within ourselves). Dwelling as preserving, holding to the fourfold in staying with things, dwelling as staying with the preserve, the free region that safeguards to each thing its ownmost place within the web of interconnectedness Heidegger writes: ‘Dwelling is the way in which mortals live on the earth … We are dwellers’ (PLT 250; GA 7:144). The word ethos means dwelling place: ethos is our way of dwelling, the place of our dwelling, what is own to our customs and mores. The place of our dwelling is the realm of the open, the wild, the sacred place, in which we humans – and ultimately all beings – dwell. So: What is dwelling? At the root of the German word for dwelling, wohnen, are the Old Saxon wuon and the Gothic wunian: staying in a place. But wunian also means to be brought to peace, to stay in peace.

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Peace here is something like being-free: Friede = das Frye: peace = the free. Thus dwelling is staying in the place of preserving, safeguarding. Heidegger says that dwelling (wohnen) is primarily sparing and preserving: (a) letting it be (sparing it, freeing it) but also (b) returning it to its being, ‘freeing it into a preserve of peace’ (PLT 149; GA 7:145). Gathering up: Dwelling is freeing as sparing and preserving. Therefore, it is letting something be, but returning it into a preserve of peace, or: as mortals on the earth, we let things be in such a way that they and we are preserved in what is own to our being – as what we/they are, that is, connected. Dwelling is the staying (of mortals) in a place (on earth). Heidegger calls this together by unfolding the connectedness as the fourfold: ‘Mortals are in the fourfold by dwelling.’ In this connectedness earth and sky, mortals and divinities, belong together in the one of connectedness. When we say the one (any one of the four), we are always already saying/thinking the other three along with it. 1 ‘Mortals dwell in that they save the earth.’ To save here means to snatch something from danger, but it also means to set something free into its own unfolding, its own sway of being. We might add to Heidegger’s thought here: If earth is connectedness and we with that, then saving the earth is letting the earth be released from the myriad disconnections into connectedness as such, experienced on a level that is not rational and is larger (more spacious) than the egoidentity of rationalist metaphysics. ‘Earth’ says: supporting, holding/sheltering, sustaining/generating, within the rich and dark of self-holding. 2 ‘Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky.’ To receive here means to take in as is, rather than to manage or control; to receive is to let be – actively to let go or release such that sky emerges as sky – and not as resource for technological exploitation. ‘Sky’ says: depth/deepening, expanding, light/lightening, opening-out. 3 ‘Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities.’ Divinities here means the hidden mystery that moves us beyond self-enclosed limits. To understand what Heidegger means with this, we need to put the emphasis on waiting, awaiting – and to let ‘divinities’ get its meaning from the waiting. To await is to be in readiness to receive intimations, hints – the indirect and subtle call from/of the earth/ dark. To dwell is not to make one’s own gods, but rather to hear these intimations, the intimations of a presence that withdraws,

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that does not lend itself to transparency even as it sustains all that is – that is the earth in this enlarged sense of connectedness as such. ‘Divinities’ says: sacred/holy, no-name of emerging/withdrawing, beyond the beyond as experiential awareness, awe. 4 ‘Mortals dwell in that they become capable of death as death.’ Far from ‘preparing for dying,’ this means that mortals let themselves be led into the true character of their finitude. It is to be capable of ‘that something outside oneself which sustains even as it withdraws.’ What withdraws is what holds – and being capable of death is being capable of standing in this withdrawal. Mortals says: aware of not-being, facing one’s own ‘impossibility,’ the receivership in awareness of beyond-the-beyond, turning to the ‘away’ in beyondthe-beyond. Heidegger gathers up these four moments: In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in initiating mortals [to the true character of death], dwelling takes place as the fourfold preserving of the fouring. Sparing and preserving means: taking under our care, looking after the fouring in its own [Wesen]. (PLT 151; GA 7:145)

Note how all four of these modes or moments involve letting go of human control, while calling for an active involvement of humans (on the level of gathered attentiveness) in staying with the process (the work): saving the earth = setting it free unto its own, its own unfolding receiving the sky = leaving to the sun and moon and stars their journey awaiting the gods = living in the intimation of their coming in their own time, a coming that includes their withdrawal being capable of death = learning to live in one’s place within finitude/limit and within what withdraws from order and meaning. This, then, is a second central notion in the notion of an enlarged earth (alongside the primary notion of the web of interconnectedness): the notion that, as we dwell rooted, we are not in control. Joe Meeker prods us in a useful way on this issue: Somehow we think we’re in charge, and that we’re responsible, and that if

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Kenneth Maly it goes badly it will be our fault and if it goes well it will be to our credit. That seems to me a pretentious point of view. The system is so large and our role in it, though it’s dramatic, is not fundamental. It’s not at the roots of the system. I think our role is a more humble one: to try to understand what’s happening on Earth, and to make ourselves fit the process, rather than adjust the process to fit some model of what we want.16

This accords with what is at stake in the environmental philosophical orientation called ‘deep ecology.’ According to Arne Naess, deep ecology involves, among other things, these ‘principles’: • the relational total-field image • biospherical (or ecological) egalitarianism in principle • principles of biodiversity and symbiosis.17 Stage 4: Earth-deep-thinking, experience of earth as living process, web of interconnectedness, leading to transformation/ transmutation/alchemy […] and on the third morning he did not feel hungry any more and sat there motionless, letting the sun and wind blow through him. He was as firmly rooted in the ground as the young pine. By afternoon he was growing weak and became filled with apprehension: something was happening. The jays and squirrels had lost all fear of him, flicking over and about him as if he had turned to stone, and the shrill of insects crystallized in a huge ringing silence. The sky was ringing, and the pine trees on the rocks turned a bright rigid green, each needle shimmering; and the pine trees were ringing and beside him a blue lupine opened, breathing. Then the river turned to silver and stopped flowing. The jays trembled on the rock, their eyes too bright, and the squirrel was still, the gold hairs flowing on its tail. He stared at the enormous sky, and the sky descended and the earth was rising from below, and he was soaring toward the center ...18

This is a description by Peter Matthiessen of a young Native American Indian on a vision quest. In the silence of the earth, in the silence of the web of interconnectedness, withdrawing from explicit lighting, there merge all the questions of origins and ends, of life’s meaning, of humans and gods, of life’s paradox, namely, that all is deeply connected, even as we, acculturated in the dominant world view, do not feel

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or know it. The silence asks us who we think we are, what we think we are doing, where we think we are going. In this earth-silence the world and our place become present to us, the lives of water and trees and stars surround our life and press their hidden demands. I have just been paraphrasing Wendell Berry; let me now quote him verbatim: The experience of that silence must be basic to any religious feeling [I might say: to any experience of deep and own connections]. Once it is attended to, admitted into the head [I might add: and to the heart, to the heart above all], one must bear a greater burden [work] of consciousness, and knowledge – one must change one’s life.19

The earth in its enlarged sense, as we have seen, is not a fixed, static, inanimate entity that somehow ‘harbours’ things, but rather is a synergy of connectedness at whose threshold thinking – as it stays with earth – is, in what is most its own, transforming and transformative. Given the earth as the name for something in process, moving, at work, emerging, as the web of interconnectedness, at whose place (in whom) we listen in gathered attentiveness but do not control, thinking moves in such a way that human experience – and ultimately the earth itself – is the very working of transformation. Alchemy is at work. This transformation offsets rational thought (which separates us) and attracts and allows us to experience a more spacious consciousness or awareness of a larger world of interconnectedness. Susan Griffin intimates such a transformation: I am filled with light inside you, I have no boundary … when I let this bird fly to her own purpose, when this bird flies in the path of her own will, the light from this bird enters my body, and when I see the beautiful arc of her flight, I fly with her, enter her with my mind, leave myself, die for an instant, live in the body of this bird whom I cannot live without, as part of the body of the bird will enter my daughter’s body, because I know I am made from this earth, as my mother’s hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth and I long to tell you, you who are earth too, and listen as we speak to each other of what we know: the light is in us.20

Gathering these thoughts/sayings: Neither the human’s core being

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(what is deeply human and own to being human) nor the earth (what is deeply earth and own to earth) is a fixed entity. Rather, each is a movement that begins (or has always begun), a movement that we humans heed and hold to and stay within whenever we persevere in inhibiting rational thought, in permeating the non-distance between mind and body and once again letting non-duality be recovered in our ownmost way of being. The difference is that this time we can do it with thinking awareness, with gathered attention to the unfolding. The earth is an actual energy, a syn-ergy of connectedness, one that we humans of the West are only now beginning to hear again, to pulsate with. We have always experienced this energy in an incipient way. Now, where the earth is in severe crisis, there is the possibility that we might nurture this energy, that it might be more ‘activated’ – and in our heeding it, be more transformative. But often this syn-ergy of connectedness is not felt and thus does not transform. Most of the time most of us are unaware of this connectedness, relatedness as such – and the possibility of expansive opening. Within the past several centuries we Westerners have become accustomed to remaining unaware throughout our lives. Somehow Western thinking reached a disastrous conclusion that both humans in their most ownmost way of being and the earth in hers always already exist in some fixed form. This assumption about the givenness and static character of human being and of the earth led to our taking the earth for inert matter and of seeing ourselves as non-involved, non-evolving – and therefore non-connected. Change, transformation, alchemy takes place when we let go of the static and separatist rational thought (which so far in this age has remained dominant) and pass beyond and under, deeper, into a larger world in a vibrant and pulsating earth (connectedness), when we wake up to our connectedness and find that in this larger world the stars and the sun and rocks and earthworms are part of oneself and that one’s own being is touching and permeating the being of all living beings. What got covered up in what happens most of the time in our culture? And can it be rescued? In her book Deep Powder Snow Dolores LaChapelle says it is ‘life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality.’ And we can recover: ‘What we experience in powder [the powder snow skiing that is at the heart of this autobiographical philosophy text] is the original human self, which lies deeply inside each of us, still undamaged [italics mine] in spite of what our present culture tries to do to us. Once

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experienced, this kind of living is recognized as the only way to live: fully aware of the earth and the sky and the gods and you, the mortal, playing among them.’21 We can perhaps get a clearer image of what transformation is about if we focus, here at the closing, on what look things and we humans have when earth-transformation has taken or is taking place. Very briefly, I want to suggest that in this transformation into earth as connectedness and humans as fully aware and attentive (conscious) but not in control, things and we ourselves begin to have the following look: (a) There is a reliance on embodied experience rather than abstract speculation. Experience is own to and sustains all things. To paraphrase Rilke, experiences must ‘turn to blood within us.’ (b) Earth-deep-thinking yields experience of the gathering: non-separation, connectedness. There is a coming-together of differences. There is the experience of the ‘no between.’ (c) A fundamental compassion emerges. Compassion in a Buddhist sense, that is, the keen awareness of the interdependence of all living beings, which are all part of one another. (d) In deep-earth-thinking that is transformative, one experiences rapture: One is grabbed by the emergence of the moment, is drawn and taken up in and by it. (e) Inhabiting rational thought leads to a deeper awareness, one that takes place as the awakening of the heart. Awakening of the heart takes place as root-connections. Awakening of the heart means awakening of the body. Awakening of the body means awakening of the earth in one, or of one’s self in the earth. Let me close with a verse from Rilke: Earth, isn’t this what you want: to rise up inside us invisibly? Is it not your dream, one day to be invisible? Earth! Invisible! What else can you be pushing toward besides transformation [Verwandlung, transmutation, alchemy, change, unfolding]? Earth, my beloved, I will do it!22

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NOTES 1 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose (New York: Modern Library, 1981), 49. 2 Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (New York: Scribner, 1986), xxvii. 3 This word deep tends to throw people off, especially in ‘post-metaphysical’ times, where ‘deep’ implies a counter-‘surface’ and something like a centre or ‘objective essence’ from which everything is and is known. Of course the word deep does not itself carry any of these implications, only that our inherited constructions carry them. I use the word deep to say the strong, the extreme, the dark and rich, the intense and intensive ‘middle’ where one is when one is ‘deep’ into something. The word itself does not need the dualistic opposite for its own and its own naming. Thus we say ‘deep [strong] love,’ ‘deep [extreme] disgrace,’ deep [dark and rich] colour,’ ‘the deep [middle] of the night,’ and ‘deep [dark, intense, intensive, rich] solitude.’ The English word deep is connected with the German word tief, which has etymological connections with tauchen and eintauchen: immerse, hold within, fully dip in. In this sense ‘deep’ says: fully, richly, intensely within, as what is own to the way of transforming thinking. 4 Friedrich Hölderlin, Feldauswahl (Stuttgart: Cotta Verlag, 1943), 52. 5 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1966), 76–7. 6 Hesiod, Sämtliche Werke (Wiesbaden: Diedrichische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1947), 9. Cf. in this regard Vincent Vycinas, Earth and Gods (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), 170. 7 Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (Boston: Beacon, 1982), xiv. 8 Jim Swan, ‘Sacred Places in Nature and Transpersonal Experiences,’ ReVision 10 (Winter 1988): 25. 9 Ibid., 28. 10 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 216. 11 Miguel Leon-Portilla, ed., Native Mesoamerican Spirituality (New York: Paulist, 1980), 173. 12 Gary Snyder, The Real Work: Interviews and Talks 1964–1979 (New York: New Directions, 1980), 141. 13 Snyder, The Old Ways (San Francisco: City Lights, 1977), 59. 14 Peter Berg, Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California (San Francisco: Planet Drum, 1978), 349.

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15 In this connection see Dolores LaChapelle, Earth Wisdom (Silverton: Finn Hill Arts, 1978), 130ff. 16 Joe Meeker, ‘Minding the Earth,’ New Dimensions 16 (January–February 1989): 15. 17 There is a serious discussion among environmental thinkers about deep ecology: Does it teach ecocentrism to the exclusion of humans? Does it introduce yet another duality by trying to separate – some would say, ‘cut off’ – humans as part of earth? Does it teach a kind of non-rational mysticism? Is it a dogma about how things are in earth – or a set of principles guiding our thinking and our engagement? Deep ecology represents a ‘deeper’ understanding of environmental and earth issues, deeper than the traditional ‘ethics’ for the environment – deeper in that it attempts to uncover, at the heart of things, their deep connections and interconnectedness. This ecogenic way of thinking takes into account that all beings share in the dynamic of living, in the ‘fourfold,’ if you will. As I see it, the deep ecology ‘movement’ fell prey to some excesses of enthusiasm when it came on the scene. It became, as it were, the battle cry for some who could no longer tolerate human domination and its outcomes, whether that be destruction of nature, gender inequality, or poverty in developing nations. One could perhaps say that deep ecology took on something of a fundamentalist aura, with the same kind of blind enthusiasm. But, it seems to me, this was not the fault of deep ecology as such; for deep ecology is more – and more richly – about principles or markings for thinking the earth and humans within it in an ecogenic and non-hierarchical manner. I even wonder whether the Daoist critique of deep ecology has any perch. For Daoism nature is of utmost importance and at the centre of all understanding of the way things are. But that ‘nature’ always includes humans as ‘one-with’ and thus as participants in the unfolding of nature and earth – not in control, but in responsible participation. I am confident that what is most own to deep ecology shares what is own to Daoism in this regard. I predict that in twenty or thirty years we will have sorted it out in this way. 18 Peter Matthiessen, At Play in the Fields of the Lord (New York: Random House, 1964), 89. 19 Wendell Berry, The Long-legged House (New York: Ballantine, 1969), 41. 20 Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring inside Her (New York: Harper Colophon, 1978), 227. 21 Dolores LaChapelle, Deep Powder Snow (Durango: Kivakí, 1993), 94. 22 Rainer Maria Rilke, Gesammelte Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1962), 476.

4 Singing the Earth gail stenstad

Another trail among the patterns of thinking shown to us by Martin Heidegger is opened evocatively by Kenneth Maly, who thoughtfully enlarges the notion of earth, thinking it as a transformative imaging of ever-changing connectedness. Such earth-thinking is one way of undergoing the transformative journeying experience (Erfahrung) of thinking that Heidegger so often emphasized in his work. I will pick up two of the trails opened by Maly and walk a bit farther down them. As I do that, I will show how this earth-thinking connects with Heidegger’s thinking on language, and make some suggestions in that direction, opening up trails that link earth-thinking with language and dwelling. The two trails I want to explore are those in which the thinking of earth-imagery brings us to think the dark and desire. First: the dark. Maly brought to our attention the earth as dark, womb, shadow, the place of what we often fear: the murky, the unclear, the unknown that carries within it the power to change things and to change us. To this I would add: consider the word earth as an English verb. All the verbal meanings of earth, without exception, carry a sense of hiding or concealing; often, this concealing is for the purpose of sheltering or protecting. To earth means to bury, to cover with earth. The gardener heaps her roses with earth (earths them) to protect them from the ravages of alternate freezing and thawing. Power is earthed or grounded to protect things from large or random surges of power. The fox goes to earth, to her earth, her den, for shelter.1 To this, I add the words of Heidegger and of Heraclitus: Earth is that whence the arising [phusis] brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation (UK 42). Phusis loves to hide (Or: to self-disclosing belongs a self-concealing).2

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Phusis is ‘nature,’ not in the sense of ‘the environment’ (some thing or collection of things that surrounds us), but as what arises of itself, or better, arising itself, the emerging and disclosing of all things in the midst of which we, too, arise. All such arising into disclosing and showing-forth is also a concealing and withholding. With every proffering, there is a holding-back, a reticence. Even the tiger lily bursting into bloom has a certain reticence. It discloses much, but who could claim to see or know the flower through and through to its core, much less its very arising? The self-arising of the blossom withholds itself, withdrawing from our grasp and penetration. Phusis withdraws in its very arising. Earth as phusis is what rises of itself, concealing and thus preserving and sheltering its own rising and concealing movement. Heidegger says also that phusis is one of the ways to say how it is that language arises and endures as language; language ‘ris[es] like the earth’ (US 208, 264; WL 101, 132). In other places, Heidegger says that sheltering and preserving the things that arise in the earthy movement of phusis is the way in which our dwelling as mortals on the earth both arises and endures. So in the imaging of earth as phusis, which carries within it both revealing and concealing, we think the connection of the arising-as-such (Wesen) of language and the arising-as-such of dwelling. Those are a few steps along the first trail, which thinks the dark in the imaging of the earth. Those steps will move along the way farther as we go along the second trail, and then bring the two together. Turning now to the second trail, we recall that Maly tells us ‘it is the root desire of humans to be with the earth.’ In Greek, the words for desire (erao – verb; eros – noun) are closely allied with one of the words for earth (era). If we attend to Heidegger’s thinking of the question of the Wesen or arising-as-such of language, we can also find this alliance at work there. Heidegger asks: How does language arise and endure as language? Language arises and endures as saying, which does its work as showing. Showing, of course, occurs not only in human speech but is, as well, the arising, revealing, and self-disclosing of things. When we speak as those who genuinely dwell on the earth, our speaking, our languaging, is a responsive saying-after this primal saying (US 255–7; WL 123–6; VA 208, 264; PLT 181–2). In such speaking, we disclose what has been disclosed to us, as well as our relationship and response to it. This saying-after is thus not a mere repetition. How could we, for example, repeat the rustling of a cottonwood’s leaves, or the hissing and popping of a fire, or the silent glow in the eyes of a dog or cat? Saying-after saying is, rather, our own peculiarly human responding to what arises, says, and shows itself, and in so doing calls for and evokes our response.

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How does or can a speaking (and thinking, for we think in language) which is such a saying-after arise? Asking this another way: How is it that language rises ‘like the earth’? This is where desire and longing come in. We can say something after the saying of things because first, we can hear saying, we can listen to it, we can heed it. Why are we able to so listen and hear? We belong within the realm of saying/showing. As Heidegger tells us many times: We can so hear (hören) saying because we belong (gehören) within its realm (the clearing within which revealing and concealing take place) (US 255–7; WL 124–6). How are we to understand this hearing and belonging? Our English word belong has something to say to us here. It tells us that to belong is also to desire, to yearn and be drawn towards that to which we belong. How so? We can see this more clearly if we hyphenate the word and attend to what each part can tell us. Be-long. The prefix be- can indicate that something is being given or yielded or supplied. One sense of long is to desire or yearn (for or towards something). So: our root-desire is to be with the earth, as Maly says, because we be-long on the earth as embodied mortals. This is our own place; we find ourselves already having the desire to move with and towards this earth. It is where we stay, where we always already find ourselves in the midst of the saying or the showing forth of things. As something emerges, it may spark our be-longing, touching and moving us, calling forth our response. It evokes the word(s) that say-after what shows itself to us. Our longing and desire is to move with the movement of saying, of disclosing and hiding, of arising and returning. We can move thus by way of listening with gathered attentiveness (gehorchen), through paying attention (Gehör) to what saying shows. Our be-longing gathers us to attend to what is showing itself to us. Thus this hearing is at root a heeding (VA 205–6; EGT 64–7). Our English word heed is cognate with the German hüten, to care for in the sense of sheltering, preserving, and protecting. What is sheltered and preserved? Those things that show themselves to us while yet withholding something, namely, the movement of arising (revealing and concealing) in which that very showing takes place. At the same time our own arising and enduring as those who, dwelling, can say some-thing after the saying of things is also preserved. Heidegger tells us that the Wesen of dwelling (which is one word for the way we arise and endure as mortals on earth) is through such heedful caring for the things that make up our world (VA 141–5; PLT 147–57). Our belonging to the earth gives us the desire both to say something after saying and to care for things, again linking language and dwelling. That is the second trail.

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Now, bring the two trails together: earth as dark and our desire to be with the earth. What do we hear when we listen to saying? Heidegger answers this in several ways. We listen to the ‘soundless voice of saying.’ We hear the ‘ringing of stillness.’ We hearken to the ‘soundless gathering call’ of the self-gathering in which things arise and show themselves (US 29; PLT 128; US 215, 255, 262; WL 108, 124, 130). It is thus that we hear and heed the earth as dark. The gathering that is the thinging of the thing says itself within and as a live, vibrant, ringing stillness that says/shows things to us in a movement of revealing and concealing. It is towards these things and this movement that what Maly calls our root-desire moves in its longing. We be-long within this ringing stillness; it calls us to it – to respond to it – in speaking and thinking and dwelling. We speak (say-after saying) and think only as we dwell. Dwelling on the earth begins with heeding, with gathered attending to the saying/showing of things. As showing always occurs along with concealing, dwelling also begins with attentively heeding the ringing of stillness. We might wonder: How can one heed something that withdraws and conceals itself? How can one hear what is silent? In Heidegger’s discussion of Stefan George’s poem ‘Das Wort,’ he transposes the line ‘no thing may be where the word breaks off’ (where the word is lacking), to ‘an “is” arises where the word breaks up,’ and then says of this: To break up here means that the sounding word returns into soundlessness, back to there from where it was granted: into the ringing of stillness which, as saying, moves the regions of the world’s fourfold into their nearness. This breaking up of the word is the true step back on the way of thinking. (US 216; WL 108)

The sounding word says our relation to the thing, but so also does the lack of a word. The poet’s experience of the lack of a word for a particular thing is an experience of the way a thing is, not as a represented being (grasped in static presence), but as it gathers and shows itself in the ringing of stillness that enables the responsive word. The ‘breaking up of the word’ in the case of a particular thing silently echoes within the ringing of stillness, manifesting the movement of concealing that is always in play with every revealing. It points towards concealing itself in such a way that we can heed it, learning to pay attention to it so that we can care for it in our caring for things. To care for things is to let them reveal themselves, refraining from the violence of forced

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disclosure, letting silence be silent. This ‘letting be’ is not a drawing back or lack of engagement, nor a sense of detachment from ‘things in general,’ nor yet indifference towards any particular thing. Dwelling means heeding and taking care of particular things. Dwelling enacts our be-longing to the earth, to the things of the earth. Heeding their saying/showing opens a way for us to hear/heed our own relationship (Verhältnis: being held together) with all other things and our place within the movement of revealing and concealing. Having heard, having gathered ourselves in heedful attentiveness, caring for things, we speak from out of our be-longing. However, the movement of saying/showing does not automatically compel our responsive saying-after, or our caring for things. As Maly puts it, there are two ways to live with this call: the way of disconnectedness and contraction, or the way of connectedness and expansion. It is possible to feel so disconnected from the earth that one has a sense of not be-longing. It is then that the fear of the draw and call of the earth is at work, especially when what is within awareness is everything that is carried within the imagery of the earth as dark. We are mortals, who die and know we die, ever changing, living and dying things of this earth. To attend to what remains silent in all saying is to acknowledge the impossibility of pure disclosure; it is to acknowledge our own limits as earthy beings. To heed the ringing of stillness points to our mortality, which, when coupled with no sense of be-longing, can evoke deep fear. Such fear sparks a shrinking back, a movement away from rather than towards the earth and earthy things, contrary to our root longing. This contraction pulls one back from heeding the revealing and concealing of things, cutting off the possibility of saying-after saying. The consequences of such a contrary movement are a speaking that is not saying (because it is not a saying-after saying) and a flight from thinking. It is also a refusal of dwelling, of be-longing with things in such a way that one attentively heeds and cares for them, sheltering them in their revealing and concealing. Such a refusal of dwelling is conducive to a violent, destructive way to be on the earth, with results we are all too well aware of: This type of thinking is about to abandon the earth as earth … [It] is already the explosion of a power that could blast everything to nothingness. All the rest that follows from such a thinking, the technical processes in the function of the doomsday machinery [or the manifold ways in which we are bit by bit destroying this earth], would merely be the final sinister dispatch of madness into senselessness. (US 189–90; WL 84)

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Such are the ways of disconnectedness and contraction, unfolding from a refusal of belonging that tends, finally, towards contraction into nothing. Fleeing our mortality, we flee from what we really are: mortal earth-dwellers, caretakers of earth and what rises from it. This is a blind flight from the dark into ultimate darkness, from death towards death, denying death only to bring death to everything earthy and alive. However, there is another way to respond to the pull this earth has for us, the way that Maly named the way of connectedness and expansion. Here, we thoughtfully experience our be-longing to the earth in such a way that we desire to move with its moving. We are open towards heeding its saying, responsively saying-after saying in our own speaking, and in our caring for things, that is, our dwelling. I want to walk a few steps farther down this path of thinking to suggest that our saying-after saying is a much deeper and broader thing than we might at first think it is. Our responding, our saying-after saying, means, as was clearly pointed out by Heidegger, to use language (in both our thinking and our speaking) in a way that heeds and cares for both revealing and concealing. It is thinking that draws towards what withdraws from us, not to grasp and force it into revelation, but rather following and holding it in question in its very withdrawing. It is speaking that allows the words for saying-after this movement to arise, letting the earth speak through us, or letting it be silent, thus letting what withdraws remain in its reticence. We speak, giving shelter to what discloses itself. We are silent, giving shelter to what is yet concealing itself (US 266; WL 134–5; WHD 5–6; WCT 8–9). This is the transformative experience of language, the change in our relationship to language that is the focus of so much of Heidegger’s thinking concerning language. Our responsive saying-after saying is or can be also, if we follow through on some hints given by Heidegger, much more than a different way of using spoken and written language. To genuinely experience (er-fahren) and follow our root-desire to be with the earth, to be earthy, changing, moving and moved, calls for a saying-after saying, a responding to showing, that is not only in the realm of words, but also in all modes of languaging. Not all our languages make use of words. We speak, too, in our buildings and our art, with our bodies, when we dance, when we sing and make music, when we create and participate in ritual. ‘Song too is language’ and ‘body and mouth are part of the earth’s flow and growth’ (US 184, 204–5; WL 9, 78, 98). So: To follow our root-desire to be with the earth, to listen and respond to saying in its ringing stillness, is, in addition to saying something with words,

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also to let our other languages ‘rise like the earth.’ The transformation of our relation to language is, as well, a change in our way of being with respect to our bodies and in all our building and art and ritual. As those who be-long to the earth, we are called, in all those languagerealms, to heed, care for, and even celebrate the dark, to be open to the mystery of what continually withdraws. We are drawn to celebrate the changing transformations of earth as they show themselves to us (in the rotting compost as well as the new green shoots of spring). We are moved to celebrate the longings of heart and body and to let our thinking, too, be thus fertile and embodied, rather than sterilized into rigid, disembodied abstraction. Thus we could think and live (dwell) passionately, from out of our root longing, our be-longing to the earth and with all that is alive. We will have been led from where we never really were (though we might have thought so) to where we always have been (if only we could have borne it). Our shrinking back from the dark is transformed into an expanding openness to what comes to us on this earth, and to the sheltering darkness of earth. We move from disconnection towards connection, from a refusal to hear to gathered attentiveness, from our panic-stricken obsession with control (and the violence that all too often accompanies it) towards the strength and wisdom to care for things in accordance with how they show themselves to us. The way of disconnectedness and contraction has been a dis-membering; our refusal to remember what we are and heed the earth has cut us off from our be-longing to earth. To heed the earth is to re-member ourselves, to recall our arising and enduring as those who be-long to earth. From out of this re-membering, all our many ways of mortal languaging will sing forth, telling of our connectedness, our be-longing, our root-desire to be with the earth. Starhawk says it so well: Hear the earth sing … She rises in you as you in her Your voice becomes her voice Sing! Your dance is her dance of the circling stars and the ever-renewing flame … May the voice of the earth roar through us

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May we sing for stones and stars and dance as the flames leap and dance … We will not be walking dead We are earth3

NOTES 1 Oxford English Dictionary, under ‘earth.’ 2 Heraclitus, fragment B 123. See Kenneth Maly and Parvis Emad, eds., Heidegger on Heraclitus: A New Reading (Lewiston: Edwin Mellon, 1986), 67. 3 Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 341–2, 294–5.

5 Call of the Earth: Endowment and (Delayed) Response robert mugerauer

Introduction Don’t we already know about Heidegger and the earth? We have read about the earth and world, about the temple and rock-cleft valley, in ‘The Origin of the Art Work’; about earth and heavens, divinities and mortals in ‘The Thing’ and ‘… Poetically Man Dwells …’ Of course these works are profound and bear rereading; but haven’t we already grasped what they say? We also know that Heidegger’s insights into the character of technology and dwelling have had a strong positive impact on environmental theory, and on the ecological practices of professional architects and planners, as well as on many, many inhabitants of our planet. Haven’t we done enough? No, and no again. Heidegger’s thinking lays out deeper and more radical insights than we have yet plumbed. We have much more to take to heart and set to work. Apparently something powerful was given to Heidegger and overwhelmed him, so much so that by his own account he spent his entire life attempting to hear it and say as much as he could, with only halting and limited success. How can we hear what Heidegger says, really? On the one hand, even in our best moments we are overwhelmed, not only by what he says to us but also by what might reach our ears through his words: Ereignis, Eräugen, Einräumen, Zusammengehören, Unter-Schied.1 On the other, we have already lapsed into the numbing comfort of supposed familiarity. We rarely are capable of sustained reflection on ‘what we (think we) already know’: earth shelters, the fourfold gathers, we are like plants needing to be rooted, the Gestell of technology challenges the earth, we are shepherds of the mystery of being – shepherds indeed, who too often doze off instead of remaining vigilantly on watch.

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I propose that instead of trying once more to directly encounter what Heidegger gives us, we try to see though the prism of others on whom Heidegger’s insights have broken and who manage both to render visible what has fallen on them, and also to show us new things on their own.2 What Heidegger originally said was disbursed in just such a way when the first edition of Heidegger and Earth appeared fifteen years ago. Today, Jean-Luc Marion, especially in his work on givenness and with his idea of an infinite hermeneutic as response to what we are given, also has the exceptional gift of being able to vividly engage with Heidegger and to refresh him for us. Marion continues the lines of phenomenological inquiry opened up by Husserl and Heidegger, pressing further into the radical character of givenness, our reception and response, then to phenomenality – to visibility itself. I will show that Marion and Heidegger are complementary, together taking us further into our subject matter than we thus far have gone. In reading Marion, in his differences as well as his samenesses, we hear Heidegger; indeed, Heidegger’s words are rendered ‘larger’ as they crash into and echo off Marion. Even Marion’s shortcomings – for instance, in regard to ‘natural visibles’ – lead us back to Heidegger in a way that opens us to finding more than we have before.3 Marion’s Wonder at Givenness Itself What does phenomenology tell us about phenomena? To consider only two poles of its arc, some seventy-five years ago, at the beginning of his career as he found his own way through Husserl, Heidegger defined phenomenon as ‘what shows itself in itself and starting from itself … that which-is-shown-in-its-self’ (BT-S 31).4 Recently, Jean-Luc Marion has worked to develop a radical phenomenology by pursuing what he considers yet unthought in both Heidegger and Husserl. His project is to follow yet pass beyond them. Specifically, he intends to move beyond Husserl’s discovery and emphasis on the constitution of objects and Heidegger’s concern with beings in order to understand the core phenomenon of givenness itself, thereby opening up new dimensions of phenomenality, human experience, and immanence. Marion continues from the basic authority of descriptions laid down by Husserl, who says that ‘[g]ivenness arises precisely when appearance gives, besides itself (genuine immanence), the object, which without it could never appear even though this object does not amount to it (intentional immanence).’5 Overall, though, he deviates more from Husserl than from Heidegger

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– for example, in fully accepting the latter’s seminal definition of phenomenon in order to continue what arguably is the heart of the phenomenological project – that is, to demonstrate that ‘to show implies letting appearances appear in such a way that they accomplish their own apparition, so as to be received exactly as they give themselves.’6 To push towards givenness itself, Marion follows the way in which Heidegger developed truth as disclosure or aletheia in order to explain that being withdrew in favour of beings; but he now shifts the emphasis to elaborate how only objects (described by Husserl) or beings (described by Heidegger) appear, while the most innermost givenness itself is not seen. ‘Being’s withdrawal must be thought according to givenness, for the gift alone has as proper to it to withdraw itself at the very moment it brings and leaves, gives and abandons its given … a giving that gives only its given, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, such a giving we call sending … to give the gift, the giving must withdraw “in favor of the gift.”’7 Though self-givenness is prior, it is invisible, hidden behind the gift given, and thus becomes manifest only indirectly. The question then becomes how to recognize givenness as such. Since the phenomenon gives itself – is what gives itself, appearing, ‘without reserve and in person’ in Husserl’s phrase – Marion is able to think phenomena by way of the gift and givenness. His major point, in fact, becomes to establish a primary anamorphosis: the identification of the phenomenon that gives itself and the gift that shows itself.8 He begins by asserting, as a first radical property, that giving itself is free and autonomous in coming forward, that it accomplishes itself independently of our exchange with it, and with which we must become correlate if it is to appear.9 Backing away from the idea of constitution as it has developed into a kind of ‘creation’ by the subject, Marion fully recognizes the critical role our consciousness plays, but wants to argue for a necessary deference in which we would give up the role of forming appearance according to our various positions as subjects, instead letting the phenomenon itself dictate the occurrence of visibility.10 How would this happen? Marion describes how a phenomenon appears to me contingently as a kind of ‘falling upon me’ in three modes: it may arrive to me as a lived experience, come upon me as I am engaged in use or practice, or impose itself on me in the case of habitual phenomenon to which we must habituate ourselves.11 We can see how phenomena are given only insofar as we let them come upon us by considering artisans who are so well

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acquainted with the materials and tools of their trade that they exercise mastery precisely by giving themselves over to them. Or, in learning to inhabit and thrive in the modern commercial city we discover how ‘habituating ourselves to [these phenomena] sometimes implies taking the time to accustom ourselves to them (thus renouncing having ourselves made them) and always finding the right attitude, the correct disposition, the hexis or the habitus that helps resist them, behave in relation to them, use them, eventually understand them.’12 Further support for such deference is found in the way phenomena make unpredictable landings in our lives. Phenomena arrive so discontinuously, so unexpectedly, and so much by surprise that our contribution amounts to no more than being open to what hits us. Often we can only await and make ourselves ready to receive what might come, as would a good sentry at night, a first step towards which is giving up our attempts to control, much less produce what appears.13 Once landed and factual, phenomena appear as fait accompli over us; they cannot be denied. Marion’s phenomenology thus develops how it is that a phenomenon arrives, crashing onto the consciousness that receives it; at the same time, it explains our crucial role in that ‘as it is accomplished only with the end and the fact, the given phenomenon must therefore fall on and arrive to consciousness in order to come to itself.’14 Since he now can say that ‘the gaze receives its impression from the phenomenon before any attempt at constituting it’ and that ‘the initiative belongs in principle to the phenomenon, not the gaze,’ Marion arrives at a fuller understanding of phenomena showing themselves as they are in terms of giving.15 Note that in the course of his analysis, Marion has redefined us. We no longer are understood as subjects, but rather as those to whom the given is given. Our proper identity is ‘the gifted.’ This name also makes explicit what we do: the ‘gifted functions precisely to measure in itself the gap between the given – which never ceases to be imposed on it and to impose itself on it – and phenomenality – which is only accomplished as much and insofar as reception achieves phenomenalization or, rather, lets it be phenomenalized. This operation – to phenomenalize the given – by rights is owed to the gifted by virtue of its difficult privilege of constituting the only given in which there is the visibility of all other givens. It therefore reveals the given as phenomenon.’16 On our way to appreciating how the earth, too, is given, and in what manner we are extravagantly gifted, we can follow Marion one more step in his phenomenology of phenomenonality. His advance beyond

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the base towards a deeper phenomenology of givenness that describes the originary and immanent structure of givenness–given–gifted also describes both our reception and the transformation of the phenomenon into what appears. He asks how, if those phenomena are so eventful, producing themselves in giving themselves to us, they become so dulled and insignificant – for example, by being lowered into mere objectivity or into everydayness.17 Part of the answer lies in what Kant identified as the conditions for phenomenal meaningfulness – appearance according to the categories, which as Marion points out, reduces beforehand what comes to what can be known (quantity, size, and so on). In the midst of such an already uniformly fixed and standardized realm, we don’t actually need to see objects; we need only notice or use them inattentively. They disappear in effect, as happens with most of the mass media that surround us.18 Clearly, however, phenomena come to us differently, given in different degrees of intensity of intuition in relation to intention. In some cases, what comes is poor in intuition, as happens with mathematical abstractions that are empty – that is, without content of individuation – though ironically, perhaps even perversely, such have become established as the measure of phenomenality in general,19 ‘where intention of meaning, in order to be fulfilled in a phenomenon, requires only a pure or formal intuition (for example, empty tautology in logic); mathematics and formal logic offer, precisely, only an ideal object – that is, strictly speaking, an object that does not have to give itself in order to appear, in short, a minute or zero degree of phenomenality.’20 Or, in the cases of our planning, designing, and producing common phenomena, we restrict generated intuition to the intention, to our conceptualization. Here we know at the outset and in advance what the product will be, what will be allowed as produced.21 (This also would make clearer why Heidegger contends that originary or meditative thinking is necessary over and above representational calculation – the latter aligns with intuition-poor or common phenomena and either misses or even denies the most intuition-rich phenomena, that is, the most powerful phenomenalities.) A third type brings us closer to the primal phenomenality that Marion seeks to emphasize and that eventually will prove to be the most instructive with regard to the way the earth is given to us. Some phenomena are saturated with intuition, even to the point of overwhelming intention; that is, what is given is ‘so saturated with given intuitions that significations and corresponding noeses are lacking’ and

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the task of the gifted ‘is to transmute, up to a certain point, the excess of givenness into a monstration, to an equal extent, that is to say, unmeasured.’22 For example, we can think of the experiences of earth and heavens that are terrifying. The overwhelming force of a hurricane or tornado, earthquake or avalanche, flood or tsunami is so great that we may not be able to bear its impact. Battered by them physically or psychologically, we commonly find ourselves blankly uncomprehending, puzzled or frozen into inaction, or perhaps fainting. Or, in the correlate aesthetic mode, when witnessed from a safe distance, these phenomena may be experienced as sublime. Analogously, those who report having experienced the sacred often say not only that they are unable to find words for what it is beyond understanding, but also that it forces itself upon them. Whether variously told as being struck, or called, or …, the experience rarely is described as desirable: it seems not easy to embrace nor to make life more comfortable. To the contrary, those undergoing the experience report a kind of annihilation of the then existing self before the awe-ful.23 Hence the characterizations in phenomenology of religion of the numinous as ‘entirely other’ and of the ‘irruption of the sacred into the world’ as hierophany.24 In the realm of human making, as Marion vividly explains, in the burst of light and image that comes from the pigment on canvas so as to flood over us, visibility and seeing themselves come forward into visibility, as happens in works such as Claude’s, Turner’s, Rothko’s, or some of Klee’s.25 Positively, Marion contends, painting exercises considerable power, since in its giving ‘this visible exercises a greater visibility than that of the natural world and thus unconditionally fascinates.’ Here we again find what happens when an excess of intuition is given to us in saturated phenomena, in the painting’s ‘making the look dedicated to what it keeps watch over. Instead of the common gaze passing from one visible to another, because none holds it (it “sees through” each), the look comes up against the painted semblance, being swallowed up and engulfed there. It no longer traverses it, but is crushed there.’26 Yet the very accomplishment of the arts in producing new visibles, Marion points out, overwhelms and sets aside the natural visibles (and thus contributes to our domination over nature): The history of art must be understood as the emergence of a flux that is sometimes interrupted but always renascent until this point, of visibles so intense and dense that they irremediably submerge what the world gives

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Robert Mugerauer to see. The visibles of the world cede it without hope of restoration to the always growing sum of the visibles that the painting tears from [the unseen] – visibles at once more archaic and more elaborate than the spectacles of the world. Humanity dominates and governs nature – but not only in managing it technologically … The painter produces absolutely new phenomen[a] … that, in each era, reign over the natural visibles, over the appearance of constituted objects, and that oblige us to see everything starting from the paradigms their fascination imposes.27

As we see, then, Marion acknowledges that the artistic accomplishment simultaneously obscures what the world naturally and abundantly gives to be seen: Art bears the responsibility of what it gives to see and, even further, the responsibility of its power to make us look. In all cases, the painting, because it diverts admiration from the ‘original’ to the ‘resemblance,’ annuls the prestige of the visibility of the world and, in this sense, dismisses the physical from all primacy, even epistemological … Art tears the look from the attraction of the earth, from the fascination of its single landscape.28

Thus, we again arrive at the question of how the earth might be given, of how to encounter the epiphany of the other dimensions of the cosmos that are irreducible to the human. (The same problem results from Plato’s version of encountering the saturated where the prisoner freed from the cave is initially blinded by the overwhelming sun: his transcendental solution also notoriously abandons the importance of the natural visibles of the earth.)29 Heidegger and Others: The Earth Is Given and Gives, but Not Alone To Marion’s intense, even impassioned, description of the accomplishment of painting and the consequent admission of the suppression of the earth, I cannot but add – with new appreciation, and as a counter – some of Heidegger’s early words that tell us about particular ‘natural visibles’ (certainly understood neither as merely objects nor as beings). Indeed, though I have always admired such passages for their quiet, sure force, I now hear them as even more energetic than I expect – booming, in fact, in their witness to the overlooked earth and its landscapes. In ‘The Origin of the Art Work,’ Heidegger powerfully moves from temple to earth:

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The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to light the light of the day, the breadth of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the surge of the surf, and its own repose brings out the raging of the sea. Tree and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are. The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. What this word says is not to be associated with the idea of a mass of matter deposited somewhere, or with the merely astronomical idea of a planet. Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that arises without violation. In the things that arise, earth is present as the sheltering agent. The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground. (PLT 42)

Before trying to hear what Heidegger says of earth and its places and things, it is important to consider – even if too briefly – how before him there have been many attempts to answer the questions of what is given, of how and why, in ancient and contemporary traditions around the globe, of which his writing about the earth is but a part. Indeed, in order to learn an alternative way of thinking the earth, Heidegger himself began by setting aside our metaphysical-scientific conceptions of nature as well as our modern subjective and post-Marxist assumptions about production. By recovering the Greek sense of phusis as the self–coming forth out of hiddenness and abiding, he retrieves a primal way to think what shows itself (phenomenon) together with unhiddenness (aletheia), and thus recovers an understanding that, though once lost (as the later Greek phusis was transformed and then translated into the Latin natura and thence into our ‘nature’), still might originarily unfold in the future (IM 11–13; FC 38–46).30 Without lapsing into a naive realism, he reaffirms the self-unfolding as the counterpoint to the postscientific revolution position: that what is admitted as real is allowed ontological and epistemological status only by Reason, so that even if a material base is recognized, the production of meaning is taken to be a result of human conceptualization and representation in accordance with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In contrast to this modern view, phusis names the self-unfolding abundance in which a rich dynamic

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always already is underway and in the midst of which we first come into appearance. Nor does thinking by way of phusis allow a relapse into reductive materialism, because the dynamic involves far more than brute stuff or raw substance. Though this is not the occasion to work out the thinking of Aristotle’s physics, it is apparent that Heidegger wants to make it explicit that with phusis we find unconcealed phenomena, which means as already related to our embodied consciousness. Phusis, then, is not only self-generating, but as such is contrasted with human modes of making – called techne by the Greeks – and including poiesis. As Sophocles long ago noted, to a significant extent our production is a violence laid upon phusis: we tear out and reconfigure the soil, the forests, the hidden veins of ore; we kill, eat, and manufacture from animals; we invent new combinations of elements once we have conceptually and physically reduced what appears to its constituent material components. Our emergence as makers, then later as producers, happens after, within, and finally against phusis. The trajectory is traced by Heidegger from the Greek world, through the Age of Reason, to the technological era in which, as he famously describes our overthrow and control of what originally flowed: The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine appears as something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into the river as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the river is dammed up into the power plant. (QT 16) Resting upright in the stream’s bed, the bridge-piers bear the swing of the arches that leave the stream’s waters to run their course. The waters may wander on quiet and gay, the sky’s floods from storm or thaw may shoot past the piers in torrential waves … The bridge lets the stream run its course. (PLT 152)

As just noted, phusis already not only says the self–coming forth of what comes out of itself alone but also tacitly affirms that such appears

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to humans, even if we are not reflectively conscious of the way it is disclosed. Among the earliest human documents are the accounts of how the earth came to be, accounts that often do not amount to any self-coming. In their different ways and languages, the cosmogonic myths of many cultures tell us that the gods, sacred powers, or divinities first shaped what we have inherited as earth.31 Indeed, these stories commonly lay out the exemplary ‘creation’ in which sacred powers or beings shaped not only the earth but also the heavens, and into that sphere placed us humans along with the animals, birds, fish, and often many other types of beings, intermediate along with humans between the animals and gods. These stories also explain our ability to make (techne) as analogous to the archetypal deeds of the gods in creation. Here the earth is fruitful after it is ‘created,’ and in the Judeo-Christian tradition comes to be thought as ‘lower’ than humans, who are made ‘in the image and likeness’ of God. Common to these primal accounts, the earth appears as one dimension in a heterogeneous cosmos, where chaos is overcome or avoided by the order established and by the many things and forces that appear. The earth is not seen as alone. Yet there may not be creator gods. There are primal accounts in which no gods appear, or in which gods come later and are included in what happens but not as outside of or prior to the primal events; and there are arguments from Xenophanes to Freud that whereas it once was thought that the world was the creation of the gods, we now ‘know better,’ having come to believe that the divinities are human projections. While this latter view has become increasingly assumed in our scientific, post-psychoanalytic age, we need to recall that with the Greeks we have already encountered a case in which phusis includes the gods, who are not seen as foundational or transcendental. They, too, are subject to Fate: ‘there is a power more powerful than the gods … Ananke, “what has to be,” or Moira, the sharer-out’; in Homer we find ‘the belief in an aweful power of Fate or Destiny (Moira), against which even the gods cannot stand.’32 In the standard account of how the Greeks came to grips with the origin of things, ‘in the beginning was Chaos, “yawning void.” Out of Chaos came the broad, flat earth, the true mother of all things, gods as well as men. She produced Ouranos, sky.’33 What would such a situation entail? At least that phusis, our earth and heavens, flow forth abundantly, even terribly (awesomely).34 Powerful rhythms would move through all that is: in the movement of earth, moon, and sun in relation to one another and to the stars, in the alternation of day and night, of the coming and going of clear skies

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and cloud-filled storms, in the flowing of rivers, waves, and tides, in our circadian rhythms of sleep and waking and of menstruation, in the seasons from childhood to maturity to dying. Here, too, earth, heavens, and humans would occur together, as belonging together in the patterning of the cosmos. The primal, mythic dimension that lingers and still informs what Heidegger says anew for our time by way of the fourfold remains considerably unthought despite, or perhaps because of, all the attention concerning his work and religion. Obviously, the history that Heidegger elucidates concerning the dynamic of what comes forth (crudely thought as what is real) and of what is disclosed as distinct from concealed (crudely thought as what is known, or is true) is too complex to be treated here. Nor is that necessary, since much helpful scholarship has covered the way his thinking moves from ‘phusis’ to ‘earth,’ and from initially thinking ‘earth’ as the concealed (in contrast to ‘world’) to later seeing it as one of the four dimensions of ‘world.’35 Without recapitulating Heidegger’s saga, it is clear that, at least in his account, the earth does not appear alone: ‘Earth is the building bearer, nourishing with its fruits, tending water and rock, plant and animal. When we say the earth, we are already thinking of the other three’ – ’sky, divinities, and mortals, in the simple onefold of their self-unified fourfold’ (PLT 178–9). Rethinking these matters in light of Marion’s emphasis on givenness, but also sensitive to – even touchy about – his (perhaps unintended?) heightening of the gap between human and ‘natural’ phenomena, it cannot seem to me that ‘I already know what Heidegger says’ or that ‘I have read the words so many times, there is nothing more there.’ Just the opposite: when I read a part of a page of Heidegger’s work on the subject, I know that it is more worthwhile for the reader to do the same than to take up all that I write. Hearing Heidegger, I find the source still coming not only of what I have to say (as might be expected), but also of what Marion and many others write; at best, we may have cleared our heads a bit so that we can hear afresh how beautifully Heidegger takes us back to earth, to the ‘natural and made visibles’ and all that is given therewith: The giving of the outpouring can be a drink. The outpouring gives water, it gives wine to drink. The spring stays on in the water of the gift. In the spring the rock dwells, and in the rock dwells the dark slumber of the earth, which receives the

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rain and dew of the sky. In the water of the spring dwells the marriage of sky and earth. It stays in the wine given by the fruit of the vine, the fruit in which the earth’s nourishment and the sky’s sun are betrothed to one another. In the gift of water, in the gift of wine, sky and earth dwell. But the gift of the outpouring is what makes the jug a jug. In the jugness of the jug, sky and earth dwell. The gift of the pouring out is drink for mortals. It quenches their thirst. It refreshes their leisure. It enlivens their conviviality. But the jug’s gift is at times also given for consecration. If the outpouring is for consecration, then it does not still a thirst. It stills and elevates the celebration of the feast. The gift of the outpouring now is neither given in an inn nor is the poured gift a drink for mortals. The outpouring is the libation poured out for the immortal gods. The gift of the outpouring as libation is the authentic gift. In giving the consecrated libation, the pouring jug occurs as the giving gift. The consecrated libation is what our word for the strong outpouring flow, ‘gush,’ really designates: a gift and sacrifice. ‘Gush,’ Middle English guschen, gosshen – cf. German Guss, giessen – is the Greek cheein, the Indo-european ghu. It means to offer in sacrifice. To pour a gush, when it is achieved in its essence, thought through with sufficient generosity, and genuinely uttered, is to donate, to offer in sacrifice, and hence to give. In the gift of the outpouring that is drink, mortals stay in their own way. In the gift of the outpouring that is a libation, the divinities stay in their own way, they who receive back the gift of giving as the gift of the donation. (PLT 172–3)

In the name of reason and progress, many of us have put these beautiful accounts aside for a more sober scientific position. Not only do we dismiss that there might be gods, but in admitting the earth and heavens we mean that there is one (and only one) set of material elements, intelligible in terms of cause and effect among a small set of forces (electrical, magnetic, gravitational) that operate in homogeneous space throughout the universe (setting aside for the moment the shift due to the theory of relativity). Here the discovery and articulation of meaningful, truthful statements, as well as our powers to shape and control natural elements and forces, is correlate with the processes of human reason, symbolic language (especially univocal concepts and mathematics), and our technological instrumentation and practices. In this characterization, Occam’s razor has shaved away the poetic, the gods, and the divine features of the human (such as the soul or …), so

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that we are left with an intellectual consensus that what is given is a realm in which earth and heavens and humans are all the same – material stuff operating according to the same set of forces as described by universal laws. In an interesting recent shift, a reappreciation of the complexity of the world that lies beyond what our reductive scientific views thus far have admitted to and can handle is developing in self-organization theory. Without reintroducing other than simple physical elements and interactions, increasing insight is possible into how the iteration of basic processes can generate out of itself the unpredictable, complex bifurcations and patternings that appear as organized phenomena as diverse as dissipative structures, autopoietic living systems, and even cognition.36 Here, too, there would be little sense in saying that the earth alone is given, since the point would be to explain how the basic phenomena build up the complex of atmosphere and planetary life, animal and human consciousness, and the ability to act deliberately. With self-organization we find that we have come full circle, back to phusis – a self-emerging realm, coming forth out of itself, constituting orderly forms out of what is at first randomly given, and generating consciousness, from perception to linguistic systems and from representational thought to reflection (including what many would call mindfulness or spiritual practices of awareness).37 The theory, in other words, promises to account for the manifestation of everything from huge biota to openended systems such as cities. All accounts, it would appear, agree on at least several points: it makes no sense to speak of the earth alone, as one homogeneous phenomenon – ‘the earth is not one thing.’ Whether we more primally enumerate the cosmos by naming earth, heavens, gods, and humans (and even more beings) as distinct dimensions that yet belong together, or whether we use a contemporary approach that understands ‘nature,’ including humans and planetary and extraplanetary phenomena as resulting from millions of years of elaboration, with the gods taken to be psychic projections still furtively reported along with continued UFO sightings, we have heterogeneity enough. Even the aggressively reductive scientific approaches that admit naught but material acting under chemical and other forces are not finally reductive, for from them comes the more adequate theory of self-organization to explain in yet another way how the complex comes from the simple, how the unpredictable and unique in time emerges without any other than physical factors. No matter what name or concept we use, no matter how we bundle or

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categorize, we wind up including richness and dimensions other than the ‘mere earth only.’ From What Is Given to How and Why Even if we have gained some further insights about what has always been given from the beginning, we have not begun to discuss ‘how’ and ‘why.’ Recognizing the complex alternatives in which we find humans on the earth and under the heavens, perhaps with or without gods, and recognizing that the situation unavoidably involves contested interpretations of what such phenomena mean – ‘Are humans and earth but one material-energy realm?’ and so on – in order to try to continue to answer ‘How are things that are given?’ we are pressed to ask, ‘How have matters come to be thus?’ ‘Why are the phenomena the way they are?’ We move back and forth, hoping to advance our understanding of the way matters actually stand – how the phenomena that are given actually are given – by considering varying possibilities concerning why things have come to be as they are. Again, Heidegger famously and seminally has provided several ways to think these issues over the course of arriving at Ereignis. His analysis of the historical unfolding of metaphysics shows that the various modes of thinking what appears amount to tracing beings back to being. That is, metaphysics holds that the phenomena of the changing realms around us (trees and clouds and all other beings) that are given to/in our perception finally have their reality and intelligibility on the basis of a transcendental ground that makes them possible. This structured relationship also makes it clear why metaphysics as the study of what is real and epistemology as the theory of knowledge go together: we need to know what knowledge is and how it is guaranteed in order not to be deceived about what is real and its meaning. And to make the story manageably short, Western culture arrived at a position about the ontic (beings), the ontological foundation (being), and epistemology that parallels what we spoke of before as a changing view of the earth, heavens, and gods. Just as the key thinkers and artists of Western culture once held that there was a sacred realm (the gods, the heavens, and some domains on the earth) and a profane realm (much of the ‘natural’ world of everyday social and economic life, many of ‘natural’ things, and what we have made), so the former realm was the province of religion and theology and the latter that of science and philosophy. As just noted, the orthodox position now is that there is but one unified

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physical universe and one universal mode of knowing – the scientific. Without a doubt, ever since the scientific revolution, where the certainty of mathematics and logic came to the fore, mathematical-conceptual scientific reason has come to reign as the sole measure of ‘what is.’ Science has precise ways to answer our question, especially by applying the concepts of causality in a logically rigorous way to empirical processes. What Aristotle already had laid out as knowledge by way of the four causes (which as principles of intelligibility – material, formal, efficient, and final causes – explain how and why phenomena are as they are) eventually develops into stricter positivism in which what is true is only either that which can be logically deduced or what can be explained by processes of observation and verification, by means of technological instrumentation. But Heidegger’s genius largely consisted in seeing and arguing how such scientific-technological specification about what counts as a phenomenon and what provides an explanation of the ways things have come about, in fact, is blind to what is most important – to what most concerns us right now: the earth and human life. Heidegger does not so much contend that we should come to see that the scientific-technological views of what is and how material-energetic forces operate are of themselves inadequate to account for what shows itself the way it is, as he notes how this position was not always so and need not be so today or in the future. He provides the best hints or pointers that he is able to indicate other dimensions of what is given and their meaning. Whether we will take up and continue the task of retrieving alternative interpretations remains to be seen. Heidegger points out that while our calculations derived from conceptual representations are correct in their way and yield technological control over the earth, they do not answer our second question: ‘How have things come to be this way?’ He carefully works out how it was that over the course of metaphysics it seemed to become clearer and clearer that the only proper, the only conceivable, basis for explaining the world lies in Reason, which ‘alone renders possible the brute actuality of the appearance, because it renders the possibility of that appearance intelligible.’38 In Marion’s approach, this contemporary assumption continues to be undercut by a more rigorous phenomenology, which after all originally was intended by Husserl to be the fundamental empirical basis for the rest of science. As he tries to push even further in his investigation of givenness, Marion cites Husserl’s groundbreaking, decisive starting point:

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It is [the view that phenomena do not suffice to ensure themselves] that phenomenology escapes all at once in opposing to the principle of sufficient reason the ‘principle of all principles,’ and thus in surpassing conditional phenomenality through a phenomenality without condition. The ‘principle of all principles’ posits that ‘every originary donating intuition’ [Anschauung] is a source of right for cognition, and that everything that offers itself to us originarily in ‘intuition’ is to be taken quite simply as it gives itself out to be, but also only within the limits in which it is given there.39

Developing beyond Husserl and clearly following Heidegger here, Marion refuses to account for phenomenality in representational terms of cause and effect. Practically, Marion contends, because what gives itself (especially when saturated with intuition) gives itself over time to us, we need many attempts at interpretation to even begin to adequately deal with it (while we ourselves change). For example, phenomena thematizable as events can neither be repeated identically nor predicted; they ‘cannot be accorded a unique cause or exhaustive explanation, but demand an indefinite number of them’; ‘they cannot be foreseen.’40 The deeper theoretical basis for this emerges from the analysis of givenness. Givenness is relieved of cause because it first gives itself: ‘It belongs to givenness to give (itself) without limit or presupposition because it gives (itself) – it alone – without conditions’; givenness ‘delivers the given from any demand for a cause by letting it deliver itself, give itself. Giving (itself) falls to the given alone, because it falls to it to appear at its own initiative.’41 Thus, the given is without a ground as, even more so, is givenness itself: what primally gives itself without why. Of course, this makes little sense unless in this we hear Marion echoing Heidegger’s dramatic The Principle of Reason – one of the most radical and sophisticated of all his works. Though it is impossible to carry out in this essay, we can at least accept the homework assignment to reread and rethink The Principle of Reason. There Heidegger argues that Leibniz’s principle ‘Nothing is without Reason’ never means that ‘being has a reason’ or that ‘being is grounded’; rather ‘according to the principle of reason, only beings are ever grounded … “Ground/reason belongs to being” is tantamount to saying: being qua being grounds. Consequently only beings ever have grounds’ (PR 51). From this solid interpretation which comes to see that ‘being “is” in essence: ground/reason,’ Heidegger goes on to an absolutely astonishing ‘conclusion’: ‘Therefore [being] can never first have

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a ground/reason which would supposedly ground it. Accordingly, ground/reason is missing from being … Being “is” the abyss’ (PR 51). Being, the abyss? Without a doubt, we need to again focus and strain to absorb the impact of what Heidegger says. We need to yet again retrace the clue that points Heidegger in an originary direction: the old poem by Angelus Silesius which says in part: The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen. (PR 35)

While these words may seem nonsensical according to an initial logical consideration, Heidegger deftly shows that an entirely different way of thinking opens up here because ‘the poet not only avoids any such obvious contraction, but provides a powerful opening to a second, originary sense of “why”: “because.” The poet is not confused about what grounds are, because he is not in the least denying that the rose has grounds or a set of causes’; but, in another dimension the rose is a coming forth that just comes forth. ‘It blooms because it blooms’ – the rose remains phusus: ‘Its blooming is a simple arising-on-its-own’ (PR 38).42 Though Heidegger is showing that there is a difference in what the rose and humans are, in the way each are (because, unlike the rose, ‘we humans cannot come to be who we are without attending to the world that determines us,’ without being unavoidably bound up with the search to find why), the crucial point finally is that ‘humans, in the concealed grounds of their essential being, first truly are when in their own way they are like the rose – without why’ (ibid.). Doesn’t this dazzle and confuse us? Call us again to think the earth? Again and again, our project, stimulated by but not limited to Marion’s thinking, is to try to recover the complex development of Heidegger’s thought about the earth. We need to renew our dedication to trying to learn and practise ‘two-track thinking,’ as did Heidegger in wrestling with these issues over his life’s course. In addition to understanding the historical development of metaphysics and representational epistemology in the most rigorous manner, he elaborates an ‘originary thinking.’ As we have seen in his explication of the rose without why, originary thinking is a meditative recovery of the discontinuous epochal coming and going – gathering and scattering – of primal dimensions – earth and heavens, mortals and divinities, and things – into historical worlds. In attempting over and over to think what such an unfolding would

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amount to or involve, how it would come about, or why – that is, without a why – Heidegger moves beyond the metaphysical language of beings and being and even beyond the ontological difference between the two; in the end, the former come to be thought as things and the latter gives way to what he variously says as: It Gives, Ereignis, Enowning (as Kenn Maly has it).43 What is given? Earth, heavens, mortals, divinities, and things; historical worlds. How are they given? As coming towards their own, as the enowning endowment of what comes only either all together simultaneously or not at all. Why? Givenness happens – without why. It gives, as it gives. As the event of appropriating. What comes about is not fixed or predictable beforehand; rather, it comes about in the dynamically mutual unfolding. We have heard this before. But what do we understand of what Heidegger says? He himself struggled as hard as he could to hear what might come out of concealment with the words Ereignis, Es Gibt; but, even in his own account, he worked with only meagre success. Do we know so much more? Marion’s thought on givenness does correlate with Ereignis and may help us a bit. Considering Heidegger’s later work, ‘Time and Being,’ Marion does add a nuance (if we do not become distracted by his refusal to acknowledge that Heidegger let go of and passed beyond being): ‘In the Fourfold, the giving – “it gives,” with neither giver nor given, in a pure giving. The gift here is of a piece with the Fourfold and the Ereignis: the gift arises from the appropriation of Time to Being, hence also of being to Being – gift as appropriation, without any distance.’44 Pure giving, givenness, without why. From Giving to Receiving, from Call to Response and Responsibility If there is givenness, and the given arrives, if phenomena give themselves successfully, then with the arriving there must be a receiving. And even if not a giver, then at least a receiver. As we found with Marion, phenomena appear to us: to the gifted. I need to become ready to receive what cannot be anticipated and what, in the case of saturated phenomena, not only will surprise me but also will be too much for me as well.45 Though giving precedes me and comes to me without my bidding it to, even imposing itself upon me, the given requires that I receive (at least part of) it in order that it may show itself. Marion’s analysis dem-

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onstrates, then, how what is given can come as itself given only when I respond to it.46 I have to be open to and adequate to what is given, since ‘these phenomen[a] are given only if I let them come upon me; [a]s it is accomplished only with the end and the fact, the given phenomenon must therefore fall on and arrive to consciousness in order to come to itself.’47 Marion, attuned to Heidegger but developing in his own way the trail of givenness–given–gifted, interprets the giving and receiving as call and response, explaining that since, coming to me, the given beckons to me, it actually is a call, calling me and upon me to open to it and to be the site of its becoming visible.48 Though the giving, the call, would come first and independently of me, it will not become manifest unless I answer it. That further means that my response, no matter how open, no matter to what degree adequate to what is given, comes after the call. Even if both need to be given together, if what gives itself is to show itself, there will be a delay between call and response – a delay that altogether is much greater insofar as I am deficient in being able to respond to the saturated, at the least requiring many responses over time, and likely responses from many of us over a long time: ‘If the call is always given straightaway, but does not show itself – does not become a phenomenon – except in the response … the response completes the call, but it is belated.’49 As an unexpected bonus – and again parallel to Heidegger’s thoughts on coming into our own together with that to which we belong (Ereignis as enownment) – Marion contends that at the same time we are the gifted by virtue of being the receivers of the given, we simultaneously come to be born as who we are. We have touched on how the given must be received in order to be transmuted into phenomenon: In giving itself, what shows itself also, necessarily, designates that to whom or to which it abandons itself and without which it could no longer appear … Insofar and inasmuch as it gives itself, the given phenomenon … shows itself only to a givee – in this case, a receiver – never to a giver.50

Thus, we not only receive the given that impacts our consciousness, but in transmuting what gives itself into what shows itself, we also receive ourselves from the given phenomenon. We are given ourselves in the receiving; we neither come before nor produce the phenomenon, but proceed from it. Marion develops these ideas to show that after passing beyond the concern with the subject’s constitution of objects

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it becomes apparent that ‘after the subject,’ or more primally than the subject, we find the receiver of the given that comes unbidden to us – the gifted. In developing how the receiver is born from given phenomena, Marion stresses how important saturation with intuition is: our coming to ourselves critically depends upon the fait accompli of excess given to us. This can be seen from the outcome of the unavoidable inadequacy of our actual finite responses to what is possible for the ‘too much’ given: as more and more is given saturated in intuition, our ‘response turns out less and less adequate – the responsal never finishes beginning … it never succeeds in saying all the way’ – and thus we are propelled towards further responses so that in the continuing engagement, historicity opens for us:51 The call gives, or rather, of itself constitutes, what is given, but it does not yet show itself. It can therefore be considered a destiny – that is to say, a sending that is not seen, a voice that is veiled. The responsal that the gifted gives and in which he receives himself entirely tries to make it such that the destiny, which gives itself without showing itself, finally does show itself … But … [t]he response can no more annul its originary belatedness to the call than what shows itself can claim to exhaust what gives itself. Therefore the responsal always remains to be completed. With the delay continually to be completed, it opens to its historicity.52

In short: both Heidegger and Marion pass beyond seeing humans as subjects. As Heidegger ceases to speak about human beings in order to say that mortals are those who are capable ‘of listening to the grant’ (WL 71), becoming attuned, caring for what is given in the It Gives, Marion unfolds givenness to clarify how we who receive the given do so no longer as subjects constituting objects (as with Husserl), but as receivers ‘who correspond to what gives itself in the act of responding; … [as] a gifted, he whose function consists in receiving what is immeasurably given to him, and whose privilege is confined to the fact that he is himself received from what he receives.’53 Yet there is more to the call and response, because as both Heidegger and Marion see, to receive is not only to be called upon to respond, but also to respond properly, adequately. To be called on to respond is, then, to be called on to be responsible – responsible to the possibility of the showing of that which gives itself and responsible for their being any phenomenon at all:

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It certainly happens that there are ‘cases in which a given would not succeed in showing itself because the gifted could or simply would not receive it.’ As we have seen with regard to the intuition-saturated, the sublime and other dimensions of the terrible and awe-ful give themselves as such cases in which, before what gives itself in an overwhelming way, we not only cannot conceptualize what befalls us, but often are not able to bear it at all, and failing to stand up to it, we faint, tremble with terror, find ourselves paralyzed or blinded.55 A first step towards becoming more adequate to what gives itself that it might show itself, to becoming more open and capable of receiving what is given, is described in the same way by both Heidegger and Marion. As Heidegger puts it, we must set aside thinking metaphysically-representationally and learn to take to heart what lays itself before us – what calls for thinking; or, in Marion’s words, our responsible response is not easy ‘for what shows itself first gives itself and to see what gives itself, we must first renounce constituting and “grasping” it … in favor of simply receiving it.’56 Our Delayed Responses? With Heidegger’s originary insights into Ereignis, Es Gibt, Einräumen, we approach the great mystery – the historical unfolding of epochal gatherings of earth, heavens, divinities, and mortals; with Marion we open to the excess of the given over our finite reception, which amounts to a call for our response and, in turn, for our historicity, our responsible giving. All without why, though with some discernable rhyme, if not ‘reason.’ Face to face with such givenness that numbs our conceptual powers, we might begin to wonder: Can we not – must we not – reel at the overwhelming idea of a future earth without us, and be moved to action as more responsible for our response? And, as we try to glimpse givenness even as it withdraws and hides itself, to wonder no less at the given with which we are gifted? We are given the earth (and, thence, the fourfold cosmos, including ourselves). As ‘the gifted,’

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in receiving the giving and given, we are also receiving a call that claims us, to which we must respond if the giving is to become phenomenal, to show itself or become manifest. We have been thus generously, even extravagantly, endowed, for a long time, but we have not recognized it (in part because we have gone along another pathway, seeking the transcendental rather than becoming attuned to what is so abundantly given immanently). Because only a few have heard the call of the earth, we have not responded in a responsible manner. Now that we are beginning to originarily think and take to heart what is laid before us as fully immanent, we may begin to bear witness to the givenness and learn to dwell in an appropriate manner that returns us home, down to earth. Now we need to take up what Marion calls the ‘infinite hermeneutic,’ where in our finitude we stand before what gives itself to us as an event in the three dimensions of time: in the past as fact already imposing itself upon us, in the present playing out unrepeatably and largely unforeseeably, and in the future as it goes on to influence matters in an unpredictable manner, unfolding indefinitely in the lives of the participants. For all of us to describe and interpret so many unstable, unspecifiable dimensions, ‘such a hermeneutic would have to be deployed without end and in an infinite network.’57 Using Marion’s ideas concerning the delay in response to the call to reread Heidegger, there is no doubt that the originary call that yet comes to us has long endured unanswered – or has been answered improperly as we have taken the wrong path (Irrweg) during the 2,500-year-long course of metaphysics and still today as technology more and more gains a monopoly over what may be considered as useful, true, or otherwise important. Indeed, this is a time of great danger, for the call of the earth has not so much (not only) withdrawn into silence, as fallen upon deaf ears. How can we better respond? As we have seen, both Heidegger and Marion contend that far richer phenomena are available than our reductive conceptual and technological modes of production realize. Though sad, it is not surprising, then, that our experience of earth and heavens becomes unnecessarily impoverished, that our responses, once broken from responsible reception by our desire to take over as creator subjects or constituting egos/ selves, no longer allow the gift to be given, thus damaging what historically has come before and what might otherwise come now and in the future. We have hurt the earth and heavens, and thus ourselves as the gifted. Heidegger and Marion also remind us that what is given,

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what comes discontinuously or withdraws without why, is beyond our determination. Since the earth never is given alone, it appears that we do need to look to the earth itself in some measure, which leaves the questions of how to do so, and whether or not there are gods, and what difference it would make if there were. And in any case, we do need to think on our own. What possibilities have we as responsible respondents? What can we and should we do? There already are a range of relevant ecological theories and practices. At one extreme we can take the position that the earth with its many organisms and dynamics was in process long before we humans appeared and that we are here only for a short period of earth’s time, and even less of the heavens’. Even if we act so destructively as to precipitously mutate life forms and make our own human habitation no longer possible, things will rearrange themselves. Perhaps not as they were before or as they would have become otherwise, but, though worse for the wear, life on earth seemingly would reconfigure itself without us, would keep coming forth out of itself. Alternatively, if earthly and heavenly realms were the origin of what was given before, and in order for the given to be modulated into phenomena through the human embodied consciousness, it makes sense to learn and follow the ways they have ebbed and flowed, to practise bio-mimicry. Perhaps in exploring more thoughtfully the dynamic of organisms and life on the earth and in the oceans and skies, according to the rhythms of day and night, of seasons, even of long periods of glacial expansion and recession, we might find ways to better receive what is given, to respond to the ways earth might heal or rejuvenate itself. This appears to happen through the cycle of forest fires and with tissue regeneration. This realm would seem to include the promising work in self-organization, which could lead to a restoration of environmental and cultural complexity, richness, and diversity. Then again, we might look to the gods for a new prospect. Heidegger mysteriously spoke of the gods who have fled and of gods to come; he famously said that ‘only a god can save us.’ What might that possibly mean? Marion, in fact, often is suspect because the overall trajectory of his work does move towards the Judeo-Christian God, though he insists that his phenomenology is purely one of immanence. What would that amount to? Of course, such a move might be a serious mistake. It seems that notwithstanding the beliefs and hopes of millions of the earth’s people, and despite the resurgence of fundamentalism in many

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religions, most Western intellectuals have concluded that there are no gods.58 Or, perhaps once there were gods, but now they have died or at least fled. If the gods never were or are no more, waiting for a return is pointless. If they linger with saving power but have withdrawn, our response will be a matter of faith and hope, of active preparation and patient waiting. In any case, a re-examination of the religious roots of our destructive environmental behaviour already has borne fruit. Over the past forty years we have looked at the tradition that has espoused our dominance over the planet and all its life, at how that trajectory has merged with our worst paternalisms to devastate the feminine, including our mother earth.59 At the same time, a renewed appreciation for the West’s almost lost positive tradition of stewardship has developed, which, in fact, is proving effective beyond any specific set of religious practices.60 Interesting cases such as the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York as re-designed by David Sellers, including the plan for the Gesundheit Hospital, might show a new way to build in order to gather again the fourfold so that we might dwell in an ecological manner. Finally, following both Heidegger’s and Marion’s indications as to how the earth might be let come forth more wholesomely, we might do what we can in our finitude by acting with local knowledge in an incremental manner. As noted, the earth is not one. Not all places are the same. Cities have different problems and possibilities than rural areas, mountainous areas than plains, the oceans than the deserts or rainforests. Here we might find a final hint in Heidegger’s last, homespun works. In the end, he does not propose any ideas or actions of global sweep. That would be counter to what he sees as the danger of placeless systems technology and would ignore the bitter lesson he learned when he did venture into national political views. Rather, he is modest and cautious about what he says and points out concerning what might be done, which is why he meditates on home regions, on dialects, on neighbourliness. But his local focus clearly is not provincial: as he says over and over, to bear fruit and thus seeds that may have worldwide import, one must first be rooted in a specific place and language. In one of the last public addresses he ever made, Heidegger spoke in just such an intimate manner and in just such a place – during a ‘Festival Address’ to the inhabitants of Todtnauberg, where he had his famous ski hut for forty-five years. In that address he proposed something modest yet at the same time so radically directed outward – reaching towards those he and his neighbours considered most dan-

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gerous – as to be almost reckless. It is important to hear his words as his neighbours did – that is, in the context of the threat that the thoughtless behaviour of outside vacationers was posing to the heretofore relatively protected region. Almost at hand was the obliteration of a way of life by global technological and economic forces, and this in a place where Heidegger (an outsider) was deeply grateful for having been gradually, albeit somewhat reluctantly, accepted into the community. After a fond account of how he and his family came to be at home in the place and with its dialect, and after using local words and place names to guide his reflections on what the Todtnaubergers would need to do to continue to dwell indigenously, Heidegger proposed that ‘one such task is to rescue and accept, into the midst of the village, the stunned and tired people of the great cities and industrial districts and to prepare for them a place and stay where they suddenly can hear silence, where they can find rest in this silence, where they can experience what is a forest and an alpine meadow, what is a rocky slope and a lively flowing creek, what is a high sky and a sparkling starry night, what the following things mean – to dwell in a such a landscape where humans still speak the strange expressive mother tongue’ (GA 16:648).61 As I argued elsewhere before reading Marion, we can appreciate the full force of this extraordinary address (and his reverence for the earth’s healing powers) ‘only on understanding it as a story of pushing to the limit what Heidegger has learned and said about the gift and giving as regioning, that is, about how all things and especially mortals are guests within the fragility of locality and the temporality of what lingers – guests who need to be appropriately thankful by responding, in turn, as hosts to yet other guests.’62 Clearly, here Heidegger is speaking not out of nostalgia or romanticism, but because it is his home realm, the world he inhabits and about which he has the authority to speak. Others will need to speak and act in properly parallel ways for other rural areas around the world: for the great cities; for places trying to hold on to their traditional identities; for those riding on the generative powers of new hybridities; for those who move nomadically, belonging to ways and rhythms of life rather than specific places; and for those with no place or mode of belonging at all. With these late, heartfelt words (which he knows will stimulate considerable critical questioning and dialogue in the little village), Heidegger is not addressing us directly; rather, he is allowing us to listen in so that we might take his words to heart, turn away from comfortable routines, and question ourselves. What will each of us do, for our time and place,

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here and now? What part of the earth calls to us? What responsible responses can we make?

NOTES 1 On Eräugen, see Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology ‘Wide Open’: After the French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 93n54: ‘Not to mention that we must also hear resounding within this “rendering visible” the old-German Eräugen to which Heidegger also explicitly connects the singular meaning which he intends to give to the Ereignis’; Heidegger, ‘The Principle of Identity,’ in Identity and Difference, p. 36; on Einräumen see my Homelessness and Homecoming: The Leitmotif in Heidegger’s Later Writings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), chapter 5 (hereafter HH). 2 Though the image is too mechanical, I use it because Marion says that ‘the given, unseen but received, is projected on the gifted (or consciousness) as on a screen; the given bursts, explodes, and is broken up; the impact gives rise for the first time to the screen against which it is crushed – an essential phenomenal reciprocity’; In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berrand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 50 (hereafter IE). 3 This despite serious reservations about much of Marion, not only the content of what he says, but also the inexplicable posture he takes up with regard to Heidegger. His refusal of Heidegger’s move beyond being or into Ereignis as the origin of difference, for example, makes little sense given his obvious intelligence and close reading; his insistence on his own distinctive accomplishments seems often unnecessary and at other times incorrect. Though I do not agree with many of Marion’s conclusions regarding Heidegger as failing to focus on being or as arriving at but then surrendering givenness back to Ereignis – for example, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 19, 33, 35nn60 and 66, 37–8, 294 – the former’s work still is ‘big’ enough to open an exceptional dialogue with Heidegger. For critiques that parallel mine, see Janicaud, Phenomenology ‘Wide Open,’ and, especially with regard to insightful details of Marion’s misreading of Heidegger, Brian Elliott, ‘Reduced Phenomena and Unreserved Debts in Marion’s Reading of Heidegger,’ in Givenness and God, ed. Ian Leask and Eoin Cassidy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 87–97. A related though distinct approach using Marion and Heidegger is taken by Bruce Foltz, ‘Nature’s Other Side: The Demise of Nature and the Phe-

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

Robert Mugerauer nomenology of Givenness,’ in Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, ed. Bruce Foltz and Robert Frodeman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 330–41. In Excess, 30; Heidegger’s famous definition in BT, Section 7, 31, is translated as ‘the showing-itself-in-itself’ by Macquarrie (54) and as ‘the selfshowing in itself’ by Stambaugh (27). Being Given, 25. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 117. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 125. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 132. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 159. There is no place here to develop the complex relationship of Marion’s treatment of phenomenon to Kantian noumena, nor to Husserl, for which we also would need to compare Marion’s most technical work, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998). But at the least, Marion and phenomenology are not approaching the issue in terms of a given as noumena that is converted into a phenomenon; rather, the given is phenomenon giving themselves. In Excess, 49. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 35; of course, this echoes Being and Time on average everydayness. Being Given, 222. ‘The Saturated Phenomenon,’ in Dominique Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the ‘Theological Turn’ (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 188. Being Given, 223–4; cf. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (New York: Blackwell, 1974). In Excess, 51. Being Given, 199. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, Mysteries (New York: Harper and Row), 15, 123–59. For examples of Marion’s analysis of particular painters and paintings, see Being Given on visibility and saturation in Kandinsky, 49, and in cubism, 201–2; bedazzlement in Claude and Turner, 205–6.

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On Carravaggio and the call, see Being Given, 282–7; on Cezanne and on Picasso on faces, see Being Given, 267. For discussions of extremes in which the object tends to disappear in favour of sensory experience, or where the constitutive experience is minimalized, see Crossing of the Visible, 13–16 on Monet, 16 on Pollock, and 17–19 on Hantaï’s Tabula, Albers, and Malevich; see also In Excess, 52, 72–81 on Rothko and 66–8 on Klee, about whose Ad Marginem Marion says: ‘This redoubling of the frame [making it smaller, compressing it] … renders visible, almost foreseeable, even inevitable, that the clash of the elementary forces of the sun and of the magma, both in fusion, ends in the implosion of enormous energy – attains the highest saturation possible.’ In Excess, 60. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 61. Interestingly, while elevating the saturation of painting over the second rank of natural visibles, Marion uses the language of the earth as a metaphor for the artwork: ‘Like the surface of the earth, which is fractured and folded under the pressure of invisible earthly forces, the magma of the unseen seeps out from the folds that, from the inside, take shape in the frame of the painting, rising to its surface like the fossils deposited by a torrent of lava … The painter senses the sudden appearance of a visible to which it would be irreligious for him to assign a reason, a cause, or a motive to paint, this is always to paint against the motive and not on the basis of motive.’ The Crossing of the Visible, trans. James K.A. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 24. The problem of avoiding a relapse into the transcendental centrally occupies Marion since he also intends to develop a position that is resolutely non-metaphysical by exploring how to keep all he describes within immanence, not again returning to any transcendence even in considering revelation or God (Being Given, 3, 63–4, 117, 119–20) – though there is criticism that he does not succeed, especially by Janicaud in Phenomenology ‘Wide Open’ and ‘The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology.’ Key to Marion’s effort is his argument that given the immanance of phenomenon that gives itself, it is the case that givenness ‘gives without having to be.’ Being Given, 120. On the relation of phusis and aletheia, see, for example, J.L. Metha, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 142–3: ‘the power of coming forth and abiding, physis, which for the Greeks constituted the Being of all that is, is at the same time a shining forth, appearing and standing out of hiddenness (aletheia)’; ‘Being as physis (coming forth out of hiddenness).’ See also note 35 below.

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31 For example, see Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: Meridian, 1963). 32 H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968), 196; W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon, 1954), 130. 33 Kitto, The Greeks, 199. 34 These comments, of course, adapt the story from the Greek to our current view in that it does not work with the Greek two-world system in which the heavenly realm is beyond time and unchanging. 35 See, for example, Carol Bigwood, Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature, and Art (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Bruce V. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the Metaphysics of Nature (Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Books, 1995); Michel Haar, The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 36 On dissipative structures, see Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming (San Francisco: Freeman, 1980); and also Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos (New York: Bantam, 1984); on autopoiesis in general and cognition specifically, see especially Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980), and The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1987). 37 See, for example, Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). 38 Saturated Phenomenon, 179. 39 Ibid., 180. 40 In Excess, 36; cf. Being Given, 140–2. And note the similarity to non-linearity as explained in complexity theory – see note 36 above. 41 Being Given, 53, 73. 42 See my Heidegger and Homecoming, ch. 5. 43 It should be noted that Maly, a contributor to the first edition of this volume, also edits the journal Environmental Philosophy, which originally was named Call to Earth, whose title mine echoes. 44 God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) (hereafter GWB), 104. 45 Being Given, 68–9, 125, 132. 46 Ibid., 288. 47 Ibid., 128, 151. 48 Ibid., 282–7. 49 Ibid., 289. 50 Ibid., 248–9, 252.

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Ibid., 303–5. Ibid., 303. Ibid., 322. Ibid., 293, 306–7. Ibid., 313–14. Ibid., 321. In Excess, 32–6. Lest the alternatives be reduced to those sanctioned by secular Western science, a more inclusive and global perspective is commendable. To note just one sensitive position, Stuart Hall argues that ‘African religion, which has been so profoundly formative in Caribbean spiritual life, is precisely different from Christian monotheism in believing that God is so powerful that he can only be known through a proliferation of spiritual manifestations, present everywhere in the natural and social world. These gods live on, in an underground existence, in the hybridized religious universe of Haitian voodoo, pocomania, Native pentacostalism, Black baptism, Rastafarianism and the black Saints Latin American Catholicism.’ Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 392–403 at 395–6. Lynn White Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,’ Science, 155, 12-3-207; Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and The Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). See, for example, and with an emphasis on feminist insights, Carol J. Adams, ed., Ecofeminism and the Sacred (New York: Continuum, 1995); Anne Primavesi, From Apocalypse to Genesis: Ecology, Feminism, and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991). ‘Festansprache Beim Heimatfest In Todtnauberg,’ 1966 in Gesamtausgbe 16: Reden und Andere Zeugnisse eines Lebenswebes (Frankfurt am Main: Vittoria Klostermann, 2000), 648; HH, 427. HH, 428.

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PART TWO Animals and the World

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6 The Word’s Silent Spring: Heidegger and Herder on Animality and the Origin of Language tom greaves

The poet says: Speech is the human being’s advantage over the animal – yes, quite true, if he is able to be silent. – Søren Kierkegaard But this apparent nearness and simultaneous essential distance of animals from human beings first becomes a real question when we think the proper speechlessness of nature as a whole; whereas on the other hand, nothing can ‘speak’ more impressively to us than the prevailing of nature in the greatest and the smallest. – Martin Heidegger

The Origin of Language: Between Man and Animal Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Heidegger’s reception as an ecological thinker has been his unwavering insistence on the ‘abyss of essence’ that lies between human beings and animals. In the now famous words of the ‘Letter on Humanism’: ‘Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures, because on the one hand they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and on the other they are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss’ (P 248). Clearly Heidegger recognizes an affinity here, what he goes on to call an ‘abyssal bodily kinship’ (ibid.).1 Without that affinity the issue would not be as fraught as it is. Nevertheless, even in this recognition the abyss gapes open. To us it can seem incomprehensible, ludicrous, and above all dangerous. Incomprehensible and ludicrous in the face of all that evolutionary biology and comparative zoology have to tell us. Dangerous, because we are all too aware of the close relation

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between these kinds of claims about human uniqueness and attempts to justify the exploitation and domination of living nature. Several philosophers have found in Heidegger’s thinking of living nature – and animality in particular – the apparent vestiges and remains of dogmatic metaphysical assertions and have attempted either to multiply the lines of demarcation or to deconstruct the apparatus with which Heidegger holds open this most problematic of gulfs.2 Others, sometimes less patient, stand ready to bridge the abyss at the first opportunity. I wish to make a case for peering once more over the edge of this chasm, or rather, listening for echoes that resound in it. Doing so requires that we not pass too quickly by the metaphysics that seems to underpin certain dubious attitudes towards living nature. Rather, we must return to the metaphysical ground on which man and animal have been continually separated and reunited. Only when we have located ourselves there can we think that distinction otherwise. The question must be raised again: What is the character of this abyssal difference? Is it the dogmatically posited distinction that it is so often assumed to be? Is it a ‘distinction’ at all, separating natural beings and at the same time encapsulating them in the continuity of nature? The site where the distinction between human beings and animals has been posited, overcome, and repositioned time and again is a site where our thinking about environment converges with our thinking about language. Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ continues: ‘Because plants and animals are lodged in their respective environments but are never placed freely in the clearing of being which alone is “world,” they lack language. But in being denied language they are not thereby suspended worldlessly in their environment. Still, in this word “environment” [Umgebung] converges all that is puzzling about living creatures’ (ibid.). If we are to understand all that is at stake in these dark and puzzling statements in the ‘Letter on Humanism,’ we must try to gain further insight into how Heidegger understands the environments of living creatures and how his thinking of language fits into that puzzle. One especially fruitful approach for undertaking this task is to investigate Heidegger’s reading of Herder as reflected in his graduate seminars on Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language in 1939.3 In Heidegger’s seminars at the end of the 1930s we see him begin to work through the implications of the decisive reflections that he had undertaken throughout the second half of that decade, which he had on the whole left unpublished. In particular he tackles the vexed question of animality and language by turning to several somewhat more

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marginal texts in the metaphysical tradition. His graduate seminar read Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,’ in the winter semester of 1938–9. This text had already played a small but decisive role in Being and Time and was now to be approached in the light of ‘being-historical’ thinking. Yet before turning to the famous analysis of the three types of history, Heidegger spent some time contemplating the complex and ambiguous relation that Nietzsche had established between human beings and animals. The animal is happy because it is unhistorical. Its relation to time is one whereby it is ‘bound to the stake of the moment.’ Yet it is unhistorical in an essentially different way, Heidegger argues, from the way in which human beings can be unhistorical. We are only ever unhistorical as beings that are essentially historical. Any ‘unhistoricality’ of human beings is a particular kind of relation to history. Furthermore, our essential historicality is bound up with our having the ability to speak – something that is denied to animals. As Nietzsche memorably puts it: ‘A human being may ask an animal: “Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?” The animal would like to answer, and say: “The reason is I always forget what I was going to say” – but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering.’4 Left to wonder at the silence of the animal, during the following semester Heidegger read Herder’s prize-winning Treatise on the Origin of Language. Through a close reading of Herder’s ‘metaphysics’ of language, Heidegger hoped to find the resonance of the ‘essencing of the word,’ and thus perhaps another, more appropriate, relation of human beings to living nature. There are no short cuts to be taken here. We must listen as carefully as possible to the metaphysics of language, because that is where the distinction between human and animal has been made the very ground and site of language itself – a decision with fateful consequences. Heidegger lays out this metaphysical ground early in his preparatory thoughts: The crossing must, however, be undertaken from metaphysics, since it is not a matter of overthrowing, nor of counterbalancing. The ‘metaphysics’ of language asks in the form of the question concerning the ‘origin of language,’ because metaphysical thinking asks for the ground of beings … Thus the question concerning the origin of human language to be posed only on the ground of the difference in kind between the animal and human being, respectively, in connection with this distinction. (EL 5–6)

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The ‘crossing’ over to another thinking of the origin of language involves displacing the site at which such questions have traditionally been posed, a site where a distinction is made between two extant kinds of being: human and animal. Nevertheless, the thinking of animality that takes place at this ‘crossing’ can and must take its departure from that distinction. Metaphysics asks for the ground of beings, whereas language is grounded on the ground of a difference. Language, then, will no longer ground the distinction between human being and animal. It will nevertheless serve as a dimension in which essential decisions are made concerning human beings’ relation to living nature. However, before we come to that we must look at how Herder poses the question of language on the ground of an essential distinction. Reflective Awareness and the Animal Economy Herder begins his treatise on the origin of language with a claim that confirms its orientation towards a long metaphysical tradition and that at the same time throws down a labyrinth of difficulties for that very same tradition: ‘Already as animal the human being has language.’5 The human being is thus, from the start, understood as animal. Yet this comes in the wake of an Aristotelian metaphysics, which understands language as the distinguishing feature of the human being, as that which marks us off from other animals. If human beings had language already as animals, then were they not already human beings and as distinct from animals as they would ever be? And if there is a general language of animality, of which human language is only one form, then how can it be language that properly distinguishes human beings from animals? Herder treads the line between human and animal with great subtlety, but he also falls into the inevitable difficulties reflected in his opening statement. He wishes to locate human language within a general language of animality and nature, as developing from a language of cries and immediate expressions of pain and feeling. Those who emphasize this part of Herder’s project may take exception to Heidegger’s location of the treatise within the ‘metaphysics’ of language. Herder’s great achievement, it will be claimed, was to wrest the study of language away from the metaphysical and theological ground on which it had been conducted hitherto. Herder gave us a naturalist, perhaps even materialist, account of the origins of language that paved the way for proper scientific investigation. Why, then, does Heidegger insist on

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locating the treatise within the ‘metaphysics’ of language? It cannot be denied that Herder takes a great deal of trouble to argue against the theory of the divine origin of language and that in this sense his account is not ‘metaphysical.’ Yet Heidegger always argued that naturalist, materialist, and generally ‘scientific’ philosophical accounts do not fall outside the realm of metaphysics. On the contrary, those explanatory accounts take their initiative from a metaphysical understanding of language. The difficulty of placing Herder’s project stems, according to Heidegger, from an ambiguity in our understanding of ‘origin,’ which was also present in the Greek word arch•. The origin is both the origination (Entstehung) and the essence or nature (Wesen) of something. Metaphysics exists between these two origins, whereas scientific research tends more and more to subordinate essence to origination. Heidegger refers to Jacob Grimm’s 1851 address ‘On the Origin of Language’ as an example of the grounding of the linguistic sciences on precisely this one-sided development of the metaphysical question of origin (EL 87). This research now takes the historical and even experimental reconstruction of the origination of language in human beings to be the only rigorous approach to the question of origin. According to Heidegger, these research programs, however successful, could never ultimately tell us anything about language that we did not in a sense already know. The result is known in advance and can only be confirmed, because the essence of language has been determined in advance. For example, we could undertake an experiment (one that Grimm discusses but determines to be immoral): ‘Two children abandoned in solitude, mute servants looking after them, would find some kind of communication, a kind of language. In this observation, we would see confirmed what we already know before, namely that language is denotative announcement’ (EL 172). Herder‘s treatise thus both prefigures and initiates the research of the linguistic sciences. This is perhaps especially true of the second division of his essay, in which he attempts to outline four ‘natural laws’ that condition the development of language in human societies. But Heidegger’s interest does not lie here, and he all but ignores this second division. Heidegger is primarily interested in those points at which Herder’s thought remains most thoroughly embroiled in its metaphysical heritage, where origin retains its ambiguity between essence and origination. It is there that we can see the continuing effect of this ambiguity in the metaphysical no-man’s-land between the animal and the

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human. In positioning human language within a more general animal language, Herder has nevertheless subscribed to a metaphysics that attempts to understand the human in terms of language and language in terms of the human. This becomes clear when Heidegger juxtaposes Herder’s opening statement that ‘already as animal the human being has language’ with the statement following only a little later that ‘human beings are for us the only creatures endowed with language that we know … they distinguish themselves precisely through language from all animals’ (EL 3).6 The circularity generated by understanding language as originating in a general language of animality and at the same time as that which distinguishes the human being from all other animals is in no way to be understood as flaw in Herder’s approach. Rather, by bringing to light and refusing to elide this circular grounding at the heart of the metaphysics of language, Herder is driven to search out its origin in a more essential way than was possible in all the subsequent achievements of linguistic and natural science, because he raises a question about origin itself. It is here that Heidegger sees the possibility of thinking language otherwise and in so doing inaugurating another relation between man and animal. For Herder there had been something lacking in the thinking of animality and thus in the thinking of the origin of language – a topic that obsessed the French and German Enlightenment of the time. What was lacking was a basic point of view from which animality in general could be thought and understood in relation to those animals that have language. Herder names the point of view he puts forward the doctrine of ‘animal spheres’: ‘Every animal has its circle, to which it belongs from its birth onwards, enters immediately, in which it remains lifelong and dies. But now it is strange, “the sharper the senses of the animal, the more wonderful its works of art [Kunstwerke] are, the smaller is its circle: the more specific and limited its works for art.”’7 The term ‘works of art’ is to be taken in its broadest etymological sense. Kunst (art) derives from the same word group as können (to be able to), so we should understand Herder to be positing an inverse correlation between the breadth of an animal’s sphere and the specificity and wonder of its abilities. Every animal has a circle to which it is bound throughout the course of its life, not after the fact of its being alive, but as the primary fact of its being alive. Within this circle the animal can sense certain things and perform certain actions. The circles of animals can be larger or smaller, they can encompass more or less. The suggestion is that there is a proportion between the breadth of the

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environing circle and the relative strength of the affects and effects that circulate within it. We can begin to think of this in terms of what are today understood as degrees of ‘specialization’ of living beings or the volume of their ecological niche. A bird of prey, for example, has a relatively enclosed circle, and its sight and grip are proportionally sharp and strong. A scavenging bird may be able to kill, but its circle will be broader and its ‘killer instinct’ – a phrase that could now be translated in terms of the specificity of the affective and effective circuitry of killing – relatively weak. The basic point of view whereby living beings are to be understood in terms of their spheres of life is thus grounded in an understanding of life in general as forming a ‘household of nature,’ or what Herder goes on to call a ‘general animal economy.’8 Heidegger finds the origin of this idea in Leibniz, and he argues that Herder is often less consistent than Leibniz in following through on the implications of this point of view. We ourselves can see the huge influence that this basic point of view continues to exert on post-Darwinian thought if we recall that in the wake of Darwin, Ernst Haeckel defined the new science of ‘ecology’ as the study of the ‘economy of nature.’9 One of the guiding principles of this basic point of view is that, in Herder’s perfectly equivocal phrasing, ‘nature gives no powers gratuitously’ (die Natur gibt keine Kräfte umsonst).10 She gives no powers for free, but also nothing needlessly. How does Herder think that the basic point of view of a general economy of animal spheres can help us understand the origin of language? According to the law of inverse proportion, the broader and more manifold the sphere of an animal, the weaker its abilities. Human beings occupy a peculiar place in this economy: Man has no uniform or narrow sphere, where only a single kind of work awaits him: – a world of occupations and determinations surrounds him – His senses and organization are not sharpened for a single thing: he has a sense for everything and therefore for any one thing naturally a weaker and duller sense – The powers of his soul are spread over the world; his representations are not directed towards a single thing: and with that he has no artistic drive [Kunsttrieb], no artistic readiness [Kunstfertigkeit] – and, one thing which is more especially relevant here, no animal language.11

The language that man already possessed as an animal was not the language of human beings. Within the economy that makes up the ani-

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mal realm there is a language of cries that are emitted, but there is also a ‘dark sensual agreement of an animal species amongst themselves, about their determination, in the circles of their efficacy.’12 The circulation within the animal economy may well include cries and gestures, but these are only particular expressions of a general dark communication. The circle of the human being, on the other hand, is so broad that it comes to a point at which it is removed from animal language and requires a language of its own. It may seem strange that Herder attributes no ‘artistic drive’ or ‘artistic readiness’ to human beings, since the argument is precisely concerned with establishing the natural conditions in which human beings are driven to invent a language beyond the language of animality. In so doing he wants to establish the natural conditions for the production of any ‘artificial’ language along with all that we more usually understand as art and artifice. But when we recall the broad sense of the term ‘art’ that Herder uses to write of animal ‘works of art,’ we can make more sense of this claim. If the ‘arts’ in question are precisely the abilities that are sharpened to a greater or lesser extent in proportion to the scope of the animal sphere, then Herder’s claim is that because human beings have the widest possible sphere, a whole ‘world’ of relations and tasks, they have no instinctually driven or ready-made abilities. Human beings stand within the general animal economy, but they also stand out in it. This thought is captured in Herder’s contention that human beings are creatures of ‘reflective awareness’ (Besonnenheit). Herder insists that this new terminology is necessary in order to avoid any confusion with determinations of the human species through the attribution to it of particular ‘powers of reason’ and so forth. Reflective awareness is not a particular human ability – it is the essence of the human relation to its surrounding world and as such the ground of all human abilities. Though the term sounds as if it refers to a particular conscious act or ability that can accompany and have an effect on consciousness, reflective awareness does not refer even to any particular type of awareness or consciousness that appears within the human sphere. Rather, the reverse is the case: every kind of awareness and conscious act that belongs to human beings is such because it appears within the realm of reflective awareness. The so-called ‘higher’ faculties down to most ‘animal’ motor reactions show up in the realm of ‘freedom and clarity’ designated by reflective awareness, the likes of which have never been seen before in the animal economy. That this is Herder’s unusual claim for reflective awareness becomes

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clear throughout the course of the treatise. He argues that even in his most sensual condition the human being still inhabits the realm of reflective awareness, whereas even in its least sensual condition the animal is always still animal and knows nothing of the clarity of reflective awareness.13 Furthermore, human infants do not begin in the position of animals and gradually develop into beings with reflective awareness. Rather, even babies are creatures of reflective awareness.14 Clearly this does not mean that they have developed powers of reasoning and oration. But reflective awareness does not require one to have developed or to be able to exercise any particular ability. It is the realm of freedom and clarity that the child already inhabits; if it did not already inhabit that realm, it would not be able to develop any of those particular abilities of reason and oration traditionally associated with language. Finally, Herder explicitly distinguishes between a particular reflective act (Besinnung) and the realm of reflective awareness (Besonnenheit).15 It is only because human beings inhabit the realm of reflective awareness that they can develop particular reflective abilities and that they can and must develop language. Human beings, Herder repeatedly insists, are built to invent language. God does not teach them language, for how would they understand his lessons if they were not already in possession of language? Nor does our language develop directly from the dark communications of the animal economy. Human beings invent language for themselves. Yet they do not simply invent language from nothing or from some sheer force of will or cleverness. The invention of language would then encounter similar difficulties as the learning of language from some divine source. Heidegger finds the problem succinctly posed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, an important inheritor and developer of the Herdian tradition: ‘The human being is only human through language; but in order to invent language he would already have to be human’ (EL 29). Clearly, human beings learn languages and they also invent languages. But to invent language per se would be a task beyond any being that did not already inhabit language. So Heidegger suggests that we must understand this invention in a particular way. We find a clue in the word itself. In the German word for invention, Erfindung, Heidegger sees a root that suggests a discovery or finding: ‘The Herdian expression “inventing” means: to find oneself into one’s essence’ (EL 171).16 We could add that the English ‘in-vention’ denotes a ‘coming into’ – in this case, entry into the realm of reflective awareness. Not that human beings simply discover language ready-made. Rather, human beings

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find their way into and find themselves inhabiting the dimension of language, which coincides with the dimension of freedom and clarity that Herder names reflective awareness. Certainly, for many, reflective awareness will still sound too much like a mode of consciousness to be compared to Heidegger’s thinking of human being.17 Nevertheless, Heidegger reads reflective awareness as a dimension of freedom and clarity that human beings inhabit, and this could well bear some comparison to what Heidegger earlier understood as Dasein’s being-in-the-world, though of course the connotations of distanced reflection are very different from Heidegger’s insistence on involvement and care. The difficulty for Heidegger, at this stage, is not so much Herder’s understanding of the being of human beings, but his attempt to maintain in parallel both his insight into the law of inverse proportion governing the economy of animal spheres and the idea that human beings inhabit a realm that proves to be completely different in kind. Herder is clear that it is a difference in kind that is at issue: ‘The human race does not stand more or less above the animal in terms of level, but in kind.’18 Yet if the law of inverse proportion is supposed to function as some kind of explanatory principle for the development of human language in the realm of reflective awareness, how does this fit with the idea that the human sphere is different in kind? Is the human world an animal circle broadened to the point of breaking? And if it breaks open, how are we to understand the event of that break or in-cision in the animal economy? Perhaps, without being aware of it, Herder is preventing us from understanding this incision properly. As Heidegger suggested in one of his seminars: ‘If essential distinction means: to be a different kind, which cannot be determined through that of the animal, one could say, then Herder should not start with “small circle”–“big circle,” but should pose the distinction: circle– no-circle’ (EL 146). Heidegger’s line of questioning can perhaps be better understood if we recall his own attempt to think the essence of animality from a decade prior to the Herder seminars. In his lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1929–30), Heidegger drew from contemporary biological research to try to broach the question of animality. Above all he was influenced by the biology of Jakob von Uexküll. Very much along the lines of Herder’s animal spheres, Uexküll maintained that biology needs to take as its fundamental point of view the Umwelt, the surrounding-world, which every living being weaves around itself. Different species of animals inhabit completely different surrounding-

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worlds because their affective–effective circuits of life are different. However, these are not purely physiological circuits that relay meaningless impulses. What is important is the carrying of a mark throughout the entire circuit of perception and behaviour. This turns out to be a semiotic biology, with stimuli understood as meaningful marks or signs that only gain their full meaning in the context of the entire circuit. Herder seems to anticipate this theory in rough outline when he describes the general significance of ‘dark animal communication’ for understanding not just part of animal life, but life as such. According to Uexküll, we know little directly about the surrounding-worlds of animals and it is the biologist’s task to try to think her way into those alien worlds. Human beings also inhabit surrounding-worlds, and in part it is the specificity of our own world that makes the task of thinking our way into those of other animals so difficult. Yet for Heidegger, Uexküll had still not discovered the real difficulty of the situation. It is not simply that our own specific functional circle of interests blinds us to those of animals. It is because we do not inhabit an environment in this sense at all that thinking the life of living beings is so difficult. In fact, it is inappropriate to attribute a surroundingworld (Umwelt) to animals. For Heidegger the surrounding-world is the world of Dasein in its everyday appearance. As we saw earlier in the ‘Letter on Humanism,’ the animal is said to have given-surroundings (Umgebung), and it is the thinking of this kind of environment that presents us with the real difficulty. For within the animal environment there are no beings ‘as such and as a whole,’ as there are undergirding the human world even when that world does not appear to us as such. There is no manifestation of beings at all. It is not simply that different kinds of beings show up for the animal, but that beings are not manifest as beings at all. The temptation – if not the utter inevitability – is for us to try to think of the animal sphere in terms of the beings that appear in it. This would then be the deepest root of an anthropomorphism that is not simply an insidious self-regard. It is not our preoccupation with our own circle of interests and our projection of them onto the animal that lies at the root of the problem, but the fact that the very ground for all our ability as humans to ‘transpose’ ourselves onto other worlds is our inhabiting a world of utterly different character from that of animals. In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger names the essential character of the animal’s given-surroundings ‘captivation’ (Benommenheit). He attempts to develop this notion through and beyond Uexküll’s basic point of view (FC 259–60). Yet Heidegger’s at-

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tempt has been much misunderstood, above all because of his own decision to begin with a set of guiding theses: the stone is worldless, the animal is poor-in-world, man is world-building. Despite his repeated assertion that the project at hand is to outline the fundamental and essential characteristics of animality as different in kind from the world of human being, this set of theses seems to place the project on a continuum of ‘worldliness.’ The misunderstanding arises because Heidegger takes up the determination of animal worlds as ‘poor’ – a term also used by Uexküll – but understands this thesis in an utterly different manner. Though Herder does not appear by name in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, it is instructive to compare his own determination of ‘poverty’ with those of Uexküll and Heidegger. Herder, as we have seen, argues that it is human being that is the ‘poorest’ of animals in both instinct and ability. Because the human’s life circle is so wide, his instinct is weak and full of gaps and shortcomings.19 It is in this very poverty of instinct that we find the origin of language in the compensating gift of reflective awareness. Since they do not leave the economy of nature altogether, even if they do dwell in a light beyond the darkness of animality, human beings require language as a kind of compensation for their poverty of instinct. Here, poverty refers to the relative weakness of the affects and effects in the human being’s life sphere compared to that of animals. Uexküll takes the reverse stance, describing the world of the tick as necessarily poor, yet he does so in a way that clearly indicates his adherence to an economy of nature almost identical to Herder’s: ‘The whole rich world around the tick shrinks and changes into a scanty framework consisting, in essence, of three receptor cues and three effector cues – her Umwelt. But the very poverty of this world guarantees the unfailing certainty of her actions, and security is more important than wealth.’20 Here poverty refers to the relative limitedness of the animal world, which is compensated for by what Herder would have called ‘strength of instinct.’ This definition of poverty is simply the inverse of Herder’s, resulting from an identical law of inverse proportion. Heidegger’s understanding of animal ‘poverty’ is very different. For him it is not a question of designating the relative strength or breadth of the animal circle, but of indicating that the animal world is utterly different in kind from that of the human being. The ‘poverty’ in question now exists between man and animal, not as a relative proportion, but as an attempt to indicate a relation that can exist between the two only as an abyssal difference. Not that poverty refers only to the

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human being’s inability to understand the animal, and not as something that also determines the animal itself (FC 270–3). Poverty still determines the animal just as much as it does human beings, because it marks an attempt to open and maintain our thought in the abyss that lies between them. Poverty no longer marks a position within the general economy of nature; indeed, it is a relation removed from that economy altogether. Even though he grounds the doctrine of animal spheres in a general animal economy and ultimately in the continuum of nature, Heidegger does think that we can find in Herder some intimation of a very different relation to animality, one that itself requires a reorientation in our thinking of the origin of language. Language would not be maintained as the differentiating factor between man and animal. Hearkening to language as itself the abyss that opens between man and animal would allow it to serve as a site where a more appropriate relation to the animal could take place. That cannot be done by beginning within the animal economy and then removing ourselves and perhaps attempting to drag the rest of living nature out behind us. Instead of looking for language’s point of origination in a pre-established animal economy, if we hearken to language we may hear in it the silent origin of both language and the presencing of nature. Were we to begin with and attend to language itself, we might no longer understand language as compensation demanded by nature’s economy; rather, we would see it as a gift, a true gratuity. We might then be able to hear in the gift of language the words to help us preserve the gift of nature. The Essencing of the Word: Silent Spring At the point that Herder turns his discussion towards what takes place in human language, thus apparently turning away from animal languages, Heidegger thinks that he can discern the marks of a decisive incision into the general course of the argument – an incision that will turn out to have important implications for our understanding of the relation of human beings to living nature. Herder’s thought moves towards something that Herder himself cannot comprehend in its full ramifications. This is the point at which he discusses the importance of the sense of hearing for the origin of language. Hearing, Herder claims, is the sense that allows for the invention of language. It is through hearing that human being can ‘sense the language of nature which teaches, and without this cannot invent lan-

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guage: so hearing has become in a certain way the middle of his senses, the proper door to the soul and the band which connects the other senses.’21 Herder goes on to explain that hearing is to be understood as the ‘middle’ sense, the sense between touch and sight, in six distinct ways. The first relates to its ‘sphere of sensibility from the outside,’ in reference to the range at which it can take things in. The second, to clarity of audible tones, which fall between the dull sensations of touch and the sharpness of vision. The third, to the sensations of hearing, with respect to their liveliness. The fourth, to the duration of tones’ effects; the fifth, to tones’ need to find ways to express themselves. The sixth and last, to how the sense of hearing develops in human beings between the sense of touch and the sense of sight. Each of these points can be challenged in various ways. Is it not the case, for example, that in a dark wood or at night the ‘sphere’ of the sense of hearing is greater than sight? Or, as Heidegger remarks, when we hear London now on the radio, do we not hear something at a distance that we could never see? (EL 104). This kind of criticism misses the point entirely, because Herder is not making claims about that measurable distance involved, nor about that measurable clarity of sound or its actual development. What Herder is pointing us towards is, Heidegger argues, ‘the kind of possession that perceives. In hearing a nearing’ (EL 104). Thus we should not set to work clarifying and refuting each of Herder’s points, but try to attend to what binds them together as a characterization and indication of something that itself binds together all our senses. This is the character of the ‘in between’ that Herder senses is so important for understanding language: ‘What Herder senses with the “middle” character of “hearing” is the in-between and in the midst of the clearing’ (EL 96). Despite his clear insight that reflective awareness is not a particular ability, but rather a way of ‘having’ abilities, Herder remained entangled in the thought of origination, which tends strongly to understand language as a particular ability that has its conditions of origination in other abilities. Thus he ascribes the experience of the middle, of being in the midst, to a particular sensory ability: hearing. Nevertheless, Herder did not remain the complete prisoner of the thought of origination. That is why he was able to declare that ‘we become, so to speak, hearing through all our senses!’22 The experience of standing out in the midst of nature, of attending to and ‘hearing’ the sounds and voices of nature, has ultimately no more to do with the particular sensory ability of hearing than sight or touch. Hearing may give us a first sense of this

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hearkening, but it is only if we begin in the middle and in the midst that we first gain this sense of perception. What exactly are we supposed to ‘hear’ in this hearkening? Perhaps the entire cacophony of nature? All of the multitude of sounds and tones that surround us? In particular, are we to hearken to the ‘dark’ language of the animal world, the cries and screams, songs, cooing, lowing, and bleating of animals? Does the origin of language lie in ‘hearkening’ to this, the dark precursor of the revelatory word? An example that recurs at several points in Herder’s text is the bleating of a sheep. Do we not learn language from the sounds and tones of nature itself, by hearing the ‘baah’ of a sheep and then fixing this as a mark of recognition, effectively saying, ‘You are the one who bleats!’? Only if, Heidegger claims, we can attend to what occurs between the tone of the animal and the ‘baah’ of a child who recognizes it, do we hearken to what is essential to language. Only if we can attend to the silence between the tone and the word. What do we hear in silence, in the silencing of language between the language of nature and the language of man? A simple break in the pattern of sound? A silent punctuating mark that can say more than words? Or something else altogether, perhaps the ‘ground of the “sound”? or even abyssal-ground?’ (EL 93, trans. modified). In that silence we begin to hearken to the essencing (Wesung) of the word. It is no longer a question of identifying the ambiguity in the investigation of origins and then negotiating the terrain between origination (Entstehung) and essence (Wesen). The essencing of the word is an event of presencing in the clearing, ‘in the midst’ of nature. Human and animal are joined here otherwise than in the continuum of nature. In the silent essencing of the word and the presencing of nature, they are joined in an event that allows them to belong together in radical disjuncture. Can we recognize anything like this hearkening to silence in environmental thought? It would appear that the silence of nature remains an ambiguous experience for us. The ‘peace and quiet’ that many seek outside of towns and cities is not just an attempt to escape certain kinds of sounds, the background drone of traffic and industry. Apart from the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult to really escape from such ‘noise,’ it is not simply the absence or privation of sound that they seek, but the particular quality of the silence of nature. Otherwise a soundproof chamber would do just as well. Theodor Adorno appreciates something of this quality of silence when he writes: ‘If you exclaim “What a sight!” in some natural setting, you detract from its beauty by violating the silence of its language. Appearing nature seeks silence,

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whereas that person who is able to appreciate appearing nature is constantly driven to verbalize something so as to free himself momentarily of his monad-like imprisonment.’23 Note that Adorno writes of ‘appearing nature’ – a phrase that sets his thought, for a moment at least, very much on a par with Heidegger’s thinking of physis as the presencing of nature. Appearing nature seeks ‘silence’ in which it can come to presence, whereas those who can appreciate that silence are driven to disrupt it. The sounds of living nature, of animals and birds, do not disrupt that silence; indeed, if we listen in the right way, those things deepen it. Our words disrupt it because we feel that we are not at home here in the midst of that silence. We mistakenly think that the only way to escape an isolated existence is to make ourselves heard. If, however, it could be shown that it is not by verbalizing something, anything, that we can free ourselves from a ‘monad-like imprisonment,’ but on the contrary that freedom lies in a hearkening to the silence that nature seeks for itself, then the silence that appearing nature seeks and the silencing of the word might participate in the same essencing. Our words would no longer disrupt that silence but preserve it. That said, there has been a very different experience of the silencing of nature. In Silent Spring (1962), a book that has had a huge impact on the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson described the effects of pesticides in North America. The silence she writes of has another quality altogether: ‘There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example – where had they gone? Many people spoke of them puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.’24 This silence is not the silence that nature’s own language seeks for itself. That other silence is only intensified by the birdsong that suddenly breaks out, giving the silence its own contours instead of disrupting or annihilating it. The silence Carson describes can only be disrupted and broken by a voice seeking to distract attention from its awful weight. Yet its uncanny quality calls for our attention just as much as the first silence. How can we give voice to the spring once more? Not simply by discovering alternative ways to control insects and disease. Not simply by developing an organic agriculture – or, as Carson called it, ‘biologi-

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cal’ agriculture – in the broadest sense. We must also learn to hearken to the silence that nature seeks for itself, a silence that is disrupted neither by birdsong nor by a word that preserves its own silent source. Our rush to cover over the memory of that silent spring should not prevent us from listening for what we have long forgotten to pay heed to, the echo of which can still be heard in the terrible silence that has fallen over the fields and woods and marsh. If we can bear to pay heed to that, perhaps we will also be able to hearken to another silent spring, the source of the word and living nature. In the uncanny silence that grows more awful and still and that we have not managed to obliterate with ever more noisy exploits, we might still hear the echo of the silence that the language of nature seeks for itself. In his preparatory notes for the 1939 Herder seminars, Heidegger begins to explore the poetry of Stefan George as a site where this silencing of the word, this ‘crossing word,’ can be heard. At the end of those preliminary sketches, which will form the core of so many of his later meditations on the essence of language, one poem is transcribed without comment.25 Lines that call for a reading of the word that no longer belongs to man, but to which man belongs, in terms of the very element in which man lives, his environment, like a fish in water or a bird in the air. The poem begins: Horch was die dumpfe erde spricht: Du frei wie vogel oder fisch – Worin du hängst, das weisst du nicht. Listen to what the sombre earth speaks: You free as bird or fish – Wherein you cling, that you do not know.

Returning to our element does not at all mean identifying and possessing that which is most distinctively ours. We can only return to our element, to our proper environment, and return the bird and the fish to theirs, if we can hear in that word of the sombre earth the silent language of nature. That does not mean in the slightest that Heidegger now understands the human being and the animal as inhabiting the same kind of environment, but it does mean that we can recognize in the silence that nature seeks for itself the abyssal ground that allows them to belong together in their respective environments. For the time being Heidegger kept that to himself, drawing his stu-

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dents’ attention simply to the significance of the hearkening that is so key to Herder’s experience of the origin of language. While it may be that there is something in Herder’s consideration of language that can help language itself move out of the realm in which it has moved, the crossing over of language involves letting loose our grip on language as a distinctive feature, as that which allows the positing of a distinction (Unterschied). That does not require the collapsing of the whole of nature into an essentially indistinct continuum with which the human being stands out while remaining firmly inserted in the animal economy. On the contrary, with a hearkening to the silencing of the word, such grounds for distinction become thoroughly question-worthy, so that ‘everything be appreciated and grounded in its ground’ (EL 127). The abyss of language that opens up between man and animal is not a distinction that is posited, but a de-cision (Ent-scheidung), a cutting loose that frees each into its own element and at the same time binds them in the silencing of the word.

NOTES The author would like to acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council for its support of the doctoral research project that gave rise to this chapter. 1 I have adjusted the unfortunate translation of abgründig as ‘abysmal,’ which still appears in the revised version. 2 The former strategy was often adopted by Derrida, beginning with his series of Geschlecht papers and most explicitly in ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),’ trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry 28 (Winter 2002), 369–418. The second route is best exemplified by David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 3 Charles Taylor’s ‘Heidegger, Language, and Ecology,’ in Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), does a remarkable job of drawing out some of these issues and tracing the lineage of Heidegger’s reflections on language from Herder to Humboldt. However, Heidegger’s Herder seminars had not been published at the time, so Taylor was unable to draw from the detailed reflections on animality presented there, nor was he able to pick up on those points in Herder’s text where Heidegger, as we shall see, finds a hint towards another thinking of language and animality.

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4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60–1. Heidegger’s seminars have not yet been translated into English. They can be found in the German Collected Edition as Gesamtausgabe 46. Zur Auslegung von Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemässer Betrachtung ‘Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben’ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2003). 5 Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache,’ in Herder Werke, Frühe Schriften 1764–1772, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1985), 696 [hereafter Abhandlung]. I have consulted Michael N. Forster’s English translation throughout, though I have made frequent modifications to it. I give page references to it following the German page reference. Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language,’ in Philosophical Writings, ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65 [hereafter Treatise]. 6 See Abhandlung, 711; Treatise, 77. 7 Abhandlung, 712; Treatise, 78. 8 Abhandlung, 716; Treatise, 82. 9 Cited in David Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 192. 10 Abhandlung, 769; Treatise, 127. 11 Abhandlung, 713; Treatise, 79. 12 Ibid. 13 Abhandlung, 721; Treatise, 87. 14 Abhandlung, 719; Treatise, 85. 15 Abhandlung, 771; Treatise, 128. 16 This had been Heidegger’s understanding of the ‘invention’ of specifically human abilities since at least 1935, when he interpreted Sophocles’ term edidaxato not as ‘human beings invented’ but rather as ‘they found their way into the overwhelming and therein first found themselves.’ See Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 167. Grimm’s German Dictionary tells us that early users made no sharp distinction between the verbs ‘to invent’ (erfinden) and ‘to discover’ (entdecken). See Grimm Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1862), 798. 17 This is where Charles Taylor, for example, locates the major parting of ways between Herder and Heidegger. See ‘Heidegger, Language, and Ecology,’ 256. 18 Abhandlung, 716; Treatise, 81. 19 Abhandlung, 714–15; Treatise, 80–1. 20 Jakob von Uexküll, ‘A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds,’ Semiotica 89, no. 4: 325. Though this book

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Tom Greaves was originally published in 1934 and therefore had not yet appeared when Heidegger wrote The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, it is one of the clearest and most readily available introductions to Uexküll’s thought in English. Note, however, that Giorgio Agamben has argued recently that some of Uexküll’s later remarks might be used to call Heidegger’s approach into question. Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 47. Abhandlung, 746; Treatise, 108. Abhandlung, 747; Treatise, 109. See also EL 104. T.W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 102. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (London: Penguin, 1991), 22. Heidegger returns to this verse almost two decades later in the lecture ‘On the Essence of Language.’ Citing only one of the lines transcribed here: ‘Wherein you cling, that you do not know,’ he then goes on to suggest that ultimately we may have to give up speaking of language as an element like the water for the fish and air for the bird, because language involves taking the measure of its own dimension. We are thus returned to the original enigma of thinking the coincidence of language and environment. ‘Das Wesen der Sprache,’ in US 184–9.

7 Environmental Management in the ‘Age of the World Picture’ dennis skocz

Geographic information systems (GISs) have transformed the work of environmental management around the world. That technology has transformed our relationship with the natural environment itself. Basically, it allows anyone to image the entire planet. More to our purposes here, it enables environmental managers to construct a comprehensive and detailed map and database of land and water anywhere on the earth’s surface. GIS users can now access, synthesize, and analyse information of all sorts in order to identify and address problems and opportunities. Advocates of GIS argue, justifiably, that GIS has become ‘the predominant platform for analysis, modeling, and management in thousands of labs, planning departments, parks, agencies, and nonprofit organizations world-wide.’1 Many case studies illustrate the power and benefits of GIS. The following are just a sample of how GIS has already assisted in environmental conservation: • The Conservation Fund used GIS in the New River watershed – some 4.4 million acres of land in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina – to help in conservation planning and hazard mitigation. That region includes ‘vast natural and engineered resources.’ Researchers used digital elevation model (DEM) topography data to identify areas of the watershed with slopes greater than 15 percent. This made it possible to target hazard mitigation to locations most vulnerable to flooding.2 • The Laikipia Predator Project in Kenya is applying GIS to habitats where large predators are being driven to extinction because they are threatening livestock. Radio tracking, both aerial and satellite,

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relates the activities of lions, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs, and wild dogs to land uses such as intensive agriculture, traditional pastoralism, and commercial ranching. ‘This is the first effort to integrate predator conservation with agriculture in Africa,’ project directors report.3 • A Wildlife Conservation Society project carried out in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwest Uganda is using GIS to map gorilla group distribution. It has found that gorillas avoid areas of strong human impact but could tolerate weak levels of impact. Data from the study will be used to allocate access to areas among local communities.4 • The migration of sea turtles through the Gulf of Mexico is being tracked by four polar-orbiting satellites that receive signals from transmitters attached to turtles swimming in gulf waters. Precise information on the movements and nesting times and places of turtles will allow the governments of Mexico and the United States to take measures to protect this vulnerable species. For example, these governments could require that commercial fishers use ‘turtle excluder devices’ when harvesting the waters traversed or occupied by sea turtles.5 Notwithstanding the benefits of GIS, conflicts arise between the environment as configured by GIS and the environment within which the animal has its being. I will be arguing that GIS presents an unintended ‘ontological risk’ to animal habitats that the technology is supposed to be helping preserve. GIS has reconfigured the environment and altered our relationship with it. The risk lies precisely in those reconfigurations. Good intentions and demonstrable benefits aside, GIS can subtly undermine its own commendable environmental management goals. It is essential to the approach taken here that we reflect on the nature of the two spaces that are in conflict. If we do this in onto-epistemological terms – that is, in terms of how each space presents itself to us and how it is that we know it – then there is no better guide than Heidegger. His lecture course of 1929–30, published as Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (FC), provides a penetrating phenomenology of the animal environment (Umwelt) based on a creative and close reading of the pioneering work of the Estonian ethologist Jakob von Uexküll. In the ground-breaking book Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909), Uexküll introduced the term Umwelt to denote the surrounding world of the organism (FC 261–4).6 In this chapter we will be describing that envi-

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ronment as Uexküll traced it and juxtaposing it to the world as configured by GIS. Regarding the latter, Heidegger’s reflections on the Frame (Ge-stell; QT 20) and the World Picture (Weltbild) (QT 128) afford thinking-access to the being-historical significance of what is brought about when GIS is applied to the wild. With these two Heideggerian phenomenologies side by side, we will start to see conflicting visions of the natural environment, to appreciate the risk that GIS-configured space presents to the lived spaces of animal habitats, and to be able to suggest ways of bridging the gap between the two spaces. Animal Umwelt Heidegger’s 1929–30 lecture built on pioneering work in ethology. Ethology took animal-behaviour studies out of the laboratory and into the field with the goal of developing a ground-level, ‘animal’s-eye’ understanding of the immediate environment (Umwelt) of particular animal species. Ethologists endeavoured to comprehend the lived-space of animals on the premise that an animal’s surrounding space is as fundamental to its being as the animal organism itself. Reviving and specifying the concept of instinct, ethologists sought a holistic sense of the animal’s immediate environment. Ethology, at least in its earliest efforts, offered us the conception of a space constituted by and constituting or framing the behaviour of animal species. Ethologists aim at a zoocentric perspective. In line with this perspective, Heidegger argues that the animal – from the unicellular organism to the domestic animal companion – is not a self-contained bundle of reflex arcs that just happens to find itself in a spatial location. From the very outset the animal/organism finds itself already always in an environment, a surrounding that is as much a part of its being as its body, its organs, and the vital processes thought to be contained in that body (FC 255). The animal environment situates the animal between inorganic being (e.g., a stone), which is essentially ‘worldless,’ and the human being, which is essentially a being-in-theworld. The animal has yet does not have a world, Heidegger says (FC 199). It does not apprehend beings as beings; nonetheless it is intrinsically related to things outside itself (FC 247–8). My term for expressing the ‘world’ of a being that is poor in world is ‘paraworld.’ Drive figures in the constitution of the animal’s paraworld; it permeates all of an organism’s movements. It is a ‘self-driving towards its wherefore [that] already-always anticipates its achievement’ (FC 229).

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Drive is ‘never present-at-hand’ – that is, never an extended thing in a homogeneous, three-dimensional space (BT-M 147). Rather, it has its being as ‘on its way towards’ (FC 229). It is difficult in these descriptions not to hear drive being described as something very much like an intentionality, a ‘being directed towards’ as Heidegger puts it in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology.7 To readers of Heidegger, the language of ‘being-towards’ also suggests readiness-to-hand, the kind of being that belongs to equipment, to things that subordinate themselves to an ‘in order to’ (BT-M 98). A fuller elucidation of the differences among presence-at-hand, readiness-to-hand, and the intention-like being of being-towards must await a later section of this chapter. For now, we need to consider what Heidegger says about captivation. Captivation is a being-taken-by (hingenomen). Heidegger gives the example of the bee that is taken by its food (FC 243). Captivation opens up the surroundings of the animal to that animal, but it does so in such a way that phenomena within the immediate surroundings hold the animal within their power rather than the other way around. Strictly speaking, the bee does not ‘apprehend’ what it sees or otherwise senses; it does not perceive it as something present-at-hand – and, we might add, something independent of the life needs of the animal. Rather, the animal is held in thrall to the thing, to which it relates as something that will dissipate the very drive that makes the thing (food, prey, mate, etc.) accessible to the animal in the first place. Apprehension discloses something as an abiding presence; whereas in captivation, the animal, driven by its organic needs, would be done with the thing, would have it disappear (FC 250). The animal is captivated first by this and then by that, circling around its environs propelled by its drives. In this circling around, the animal inscribes, as it were, a zone or space, within which its way of being or life unfolds. Within this space, things give themselves in their ‘what’ and ‘how.’ The bee flying about and collecting nourishment does not see flowers except insofar as they bear on its drive for nourishment. For the bee driven by the need for nourishment, ‘flowers’ equals ‘food.’ The drive for nourishment determines not only what counts for food in the bee’s surroundings but also how that food will give itself to the bee – in this case, as a certain scent. Each kind of animal has its own world. Thus, Heidegger alludes to the ‘bee’s world’ with its hive, its cells, the blossoms it seeks out, and the other bees of the swarm, and he distinguishes this from the ‘world of the frog, the world of the chaffinch, and so on.’ Each is a ‘specific

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domain and is strictly circumscribed’ (FC 193). For the beetle, he notes, a blade of grass is a ‘beetle-path on which the beetle specifically seeks beetle-nourishment, and not just any edible matter in general’ (FC 198). The animal then opens up to its surroundings, and its relationship to its environment is intrinsic to its being-an-animal. At the same time, the world is not given to the animal with an open horizon. Rather, the animal is as much confined to its paraworld as it is open to the contents of that world. What relates the animal to its environment as well as holds it in thrall are its drives, its instincts. These configure its immediate space, and that space in turn configures the behaviour of the animal. GIS Space GIS technology maps a very different kind of space than what is constituted by animal species themselves. Indeed, the two spaces seem to be at opposite ends of a spectrum. GIS is a ‘whole earth’ technology. It enables the geographer not only to map and track phenomena on any part of the planet but also to link vast amounts of data – layers and layers of data – to geographic coordinates. In principle, then, GIS makes it possible to configure the entire planet as both map and databank. GIS mapping technology transforms the world into a representation; and more than that, that representation ‘contains’ an open-ended fund of information – information that is available on demand to researchers, who can tap into this standing reserve of data whenever they like. The entire planet becomes representation, a representation that harbours beneath its image-surface a storehouse of info-resources, waiting to be mined by researchers in much the same way the earth itself is mined for its mineral and fuel wealth. Unlike the animal confined in and defined by the narrow limits of its territory, GIS geographers have the world at their disposal. From a position outside and above the earth, GIS researchers can bring the entire world within the GIS template. The GIS space is constructed ‘from on high.’ Many of the data, including those found to be of greatest use, are derived from near–outer space, from satellite sensors that record data and beam them down to earth. A program then stores and aggregates the data, mapping them onto a geospatial grid whose coordinates are secured by the GPS. To repeat, satellites in geostationary orbit around the earth allow anyone anywhere to map and track anything anywhere using latitude and longitude. The African Elephant Monitoring Project in Cameroon offers an example of how GIS works and attests to its purposes. Transmitters are at-

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tached to high-ranking female elephants, whose movements represent those of the herd. Data that include latitude, longitude, time of day, and other information are beamed up to NOAA weather satellites several times a day. Those data are then beamed down to a facility in France, where they are collected and processed to produce GIS maps representing the movements of herds over time and in the context of other data embedded in and overlaid on the electronic map.8 All of this monitoring is meant to both manage and protect elephants in their habitat. At first glance, GIS technology is simply another means for mapping a territory. The relationship between a conventional map and actual territory is largely the same as the one between a GIS map-database and what it represents.9 The map is not a duplicate of the mapped. As a mere representation of a territory, one that uses icons and symbols and geometric markings, the map does not represent everything. A map selectively represents features of its representatum, the territory. Mapping, fundamentally a cognitive undertaking, is linked pragmatically to a purpose exterior to the cognition. GIS mapping goes beyond traditional mapping in a way that sets it apart from all earlier cartography. The essence of GIS lies in how it fuses two-dimensional mapping as we know it from maps printed on paper with the computerized storage and processing of data by database software.10 GIS enables the map maker and the map user to link to a map of a territory those data they consider pertinent. GIS data are structured on the same map grid, but the resulting grid will contain different kinds of data, which can be overlaid so as to present a composite showing the relationship in space between various sets of ‘spatialized’ data (e.g., wetlands areas and duck population distribution).11 Of course, a single one-to-one comparison on a map of two data sets does not require sophisticated software; indeed, it does not require a computer at all. The ‘value added’ of GIS rises as the amount of data to be integrated rises or when users want to consider first the overlay of x and y, then x and z, then the overlay of the intersection of x and z with v. Data already collected and stored can be called up immediately in response to successive display requirements and projected onto the map grid to show or establish patterns (or their lack). Furthermore, the automatic sensing, collection, storage, and aggregation of data obviously enhances the advantage of a computerized map-production system. Likewise, the distribution of any given map via the Internet multiplies its utility.12 Heidegger tells us that the ‘essence of modern technology lies in Enframing’ – a mode of disclosure that aptly describes GIS (QT 25). Be-

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cause data, not necessarily geographical in themselves, are stored on the GIS map, GIS users can summon on demand the data they deem important. The database underlying the map amounts to a standing reserve (Bestand) in the sense that Heidegger uses the term: ‘Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand … so that it may be on call for a further ordering.’ Standing reserve designates ‘the way in which everything presences’ in response to the ‘challenging revealing’ that is definitive of modern technoscience (QT 17). What Heidegger says of modern physics applies here: ‘Nature reports herself … through calculation and … it remains orderable as a system of information’ (QT 23). Heidegger sees a constructivism in technoscience that applies to GIS. Indeed, GIS may count as the perfect example of Enframing. Heidegger contends that when we reduce the plenitude of nature to a standing reserve, when we configure it as information ‘on call,’ ‘the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct’ (QT 27). We may interpolate Heidegger’s words: with the construction – and, we should add, use – of GIS mapping systems, the impression comes to prevail that everything the researcher encounters through the optics and operations of GIS technology exists as the researcher’s construct. In still other words, the planet itself – in its totality – offers itself as a construct. GIS mapping marks the decisive passage from a geography of places to a geometry of space, indeed to a full mathematization of the earth habitat. GIS space is a mathematical space, a space whose elements are geometrical: points, lines, areas. The space and reality built upon this space (the mapped territory, representatum) is constructed, artificial. It is both the product and the function of a deliberate operation of relating, a product that takes the form of an ensemble of relations among entries in the database. Reality, as represented by GIS, is an aggregate of data constructed by establishing one-to-one correspondences between entities in the territory and representations in the map/database and then repeating this pairing process again and again until the database/map is ‘full.’ The result is a closed system that nonetheless allows for seemingly unlimited variations as data are accessed to give this and then that image of the territory. What is common to all imagings of the data (and, it follows, to the territorial referents of those data) is precisely their availability for imaging. Reality is no longer what the human experiences in its everyday being-in-the-world or what the non-human animal experiences in its Umwelt, but rather the re-presentable of the re-presented, the recallable,

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that which answers to the map user’s commands to display. Neither the aggregate character of the reality addressed nor its re-presentability in innumerable displays should distract us from recognizing the essential unity and uniformity of the spatial reality in question. The aggregate is a function of an aggregating that begins axiomatically and proceeds methodically by virtue of an a priori determination made about what will count as real for the purposes of the map. Likewise, successive imagings and maps made possible by GIS issue from a common fund of data that are essentially uniform in their specifications, and successive map variations are guaranteed to converge because they are designed from the start to fit the same grid. No ontological surprises. Here we would do well to recall what Heidegger says in ‘The Age of the World Picture.’ ‘World picture’ does not refer simply to a particular representation of the world. Rather, it is meant to suggest that in modern technoscience, the very being of the world is given in its representedness – that the world ‘becomes picture … distinguishes the essence of the modern age [die Neuzeit]’ (QT 130). The world denoted by ‘world picture’ is the world in its entirety, not just the physical world or nature but history as well (QT 129). For its part, ‘picture’ signifies much more than an image or a copy of what is pictured. Heidegger tells us that ‘where the world becomes picture, what is, in its entirety is juxtaposed as that for which man is prepared and which, correspondingly, he intends to bring before himself and have before himself, and intends in a decisive sense to set in place before himself’ (QT 129). I have italicized ‘to set in place’ because it anticipates what Heidegger says later about the ‘production’ of the world as picture: ‘The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture. The word picture [Bild] now means the structured image [Gebild] which is the creature of man’s producing which represents and sets before’ (QT 134). Such a producing means that knowledge will be understood as procedure (QT 118), one that operates within and to constitute a ‘standing-together,’ which Heidegger calls ‘system.’ It should be apparent that the essential purpose of GIS is precisely to give us the natural environment as something represented – that is, in its representedness or its representability – not as it gives itself in the everyday being-in-the-world of humans or in the Umwelt of non-human animals, but insofar as it conforms to the geometrical-mathematical grid that underlies GIS technology. Having described, in onto-epistemological terms, the animal Umwelt and the GIS map-space, it should be clear how they differ – indeed, how they essentially oppose each other. On the one hand there is the

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intimate space of the individual animal, a surrounding environment alive with and inflected by ‘meanings’ related to the animal’s instinctual needs. On the other hand there is GIS technology, which projects a vast, uniform, and indifferent space in which meaning emerges only as a function of correlations established statistically by scientists and other users, who seek out answers to the questions they have brought to the data analysis. The Umwelt or animal environment encompasses the animal; it is controlling. The GIS user, by contrast, encompasses the environment with her represented space, controlling her perception of and relation to things within the space ad libitum. The animal’s space is a lived geography that engages the animal affectively, behaviourally, and cognitively at the same time and at all times. The GIS-based space is a construct, artificial and abstract and (literally) remote from the animal and the territory it represents. Indeed, GIS-space does not exist for the animal but only for those who study it and who would control – for good or bad reasons – the territory it comprehends. The Ontological Risk and Integrating Spaces Heidegger has helped us see that technology is not just a tool employed by humans (QT 4–5), one that is neutral with respect to the things it addresses; rather, it is deeply and essentially a way in which beings come to disclose – and conceal – themselves (QT 12). As such, technology harbours within itself the possibility and (ontological) risk of covering over the being of the things it deals with (QT 27). I would add that precisely because GIS succeeds so well at its stated aims, it presents a special risk of covering over the phenomena it deals with. The analysis of defective tools from Being and Time is pertinent here. It is the tool’s failing to lend itself to its purposes as something ready-to-hand that makes us aware of the instrumental totality of which the tool is part (BT-M 104). As long as everything functions well within that totality, we are not explicitly aware of that instrumental totality or readinessto-hand as something thematic. The argument here is that GIS technology succeeds so well at its purposes that its own nature remains inconspicuous and it ends up validating its own premise (that reality = representedness via mathematization). Every validation of specific results within the project ends up progressively validating the premises and methodology of the project itself. It is significant, too, that GIS technology is an information technology. As such, it belongs to the realm of signs. GIS, because it is a form of

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geospatial information technology, and by virtue of its extreme removal from the things it deals with (it collects its information from near–outer space), is more susceptible to confounding its constructs than either (a) an information technology that brings us closer to the scene of action (e.g., television coverage of a forest fire) or (b) a more basic (non-information) technology (e.g., earth-moving equipment for building a dam) of the sort that places its user in proximity with the things it would shape and control. The key word is ‘risk.’ On the one hand, risk implies possible danger, a threat, and attendant fear. It is not a forgone conclusion that environmental management of the type discussed here necessarily endangers the animal or the wild. The risk spoken of here is onto-epistemological – that is, it has to do with how environmental things (the things of the animal’s lived environment) present themselves and are known. To be sure, highly specific ‘real world’ or ontic dangers can arise or persist, if our understanding of the natural environment and its non-human animal inhabitants is distorted or deficient. We may miss ‘seeing’ threats at all because our data do not include – nor can they include – the lived experience of what is threatening. A technology that privileges the visual and the mathematical can devalue experience that is tactile or auditory, for example, or overrate what is measurable and miss what cannot be expressed mathematically. Factors bearing on the health of an ecosystem or the well-being of its non-human inhabitants can be downplayed, leaving issues unaddressed or improperly dealt with. When we operate on the environment as if it were merely a cognitive construct, we risk undermining the very environmental awareness that motivates environmental concern in the first place. This problem is especially significant when the technology is intended to promote environmental awareness. Similarly, a technology that appears to offer such a commanding knowledge of nature can reinforce the attitude of man-kind as lord of the earth – an attitude whose origins in Western science eco-feminists have documented and critiqued. Carolyn Merchant, professor of environmental history, philosophy, and ethics at the University of California at Berkeley, offers a close and critical reading of Francis Bacon’s writings on science in which she highlights the ambition to dominate nature, an ambition that Bacon sees as instrinsic to the project of science itself. Merchant shows that the domination of nature and the domination of women are barely separable motifs in Bacon, as well as in other ‘founding fathers’ of modern science and in the broader culture

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of the time.13 Ariel Salleh, an eco-feminist writer and activist, situates the domination of nature within a ‘patriarchal hierarchy’ – a term that describes both an ontology and a social order.14 Thinkers and writers like Merchant and Salleh remind us of the onto-epistemological origins of present-day technoscientific thought as well as the collusion of thought, culture, and society in sustaining a technoscientific relationship with the earth. GIS, as a technoscientific achievement, tacitly carries forward an ontological program that was articulated explicitly at the very beginnings of modern science. If risk implies danger, it also implies the possibility of averting danger, of diminishing threats, of displacing fears with hope. A self-aware use of GIS technology (i.e., one that is attentive to its own constructivism and abstraction) can work to supplement its systems approach with a zoocentric understanding of the wild. Integration here does not mean correlating data within the database/map according to the protocols of the project, but the harder task of integrating the entire GIS-based project with understandings that resist incorporation as data within the GIS system. Two possibilities for such integration present themselves. First, before a GIS system is designed, a zoocentric perspective can be reflected in the design – that is, in the selection of factors and measures that approximate or stand rough proxy for aspects of the animal Umwelt as experienced by a species in the region to be mapped. The sonic space as lived by the bat cannot be entered as such into the GIS construct, but pertinent features that bear on the life and well-being of this echo-locating species can be tracked and mapped (e.g., caves). It is a premise of ethological science that an animal’s instinctual life manifests itself in rigid behaviour patterns – overt, visible, spatial. In principle, then, knowledgeable and caring GIS researchers should be able to track data and identify geographic features that are important to the animal’s instinctual life within its Umwelt. In the African Elephant Monitoring Project referred to earlier, the very design of the project required an ethological understanding of elephant society. Put another way, it must have been known from the start that the movements of a high-ranking female elephant would provide information about the travels of the herd. Not only pre-existing field knowledge but also experts deployed to the field – biologists, veterinarians, and trackers – were essential to the project. The second possibility for integrating a zoocentric perspective is at the conclusion of a GIS project – that is, when the results come in and offer themselves for interpretation. Why is it that some species avoid

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zones of encounter with humans while others are not disturbed as much? Here, the species-specific spatiality of an animal can suggest the meanings of patterns that emerge during GIS mapping. How will animals respond to proposed solutions? To relocation, or to a construction project that invades habitats? A sensitive researcher who has observed animals in the wild might well be able to anticipate how they will react – perhaps, in some sense, how they would feel – as a result of reconfigurations of their space. GIS is a powerful tool for environmental management. This is because, unlike more simple tools (e.g., a hammer), GIS constructs the world after its own image and does so with so much success that it conceals its own way of construing the world. The paradoxical virtue of the hammer is that from time to time it fails to serve its purpose. Because of that we are reminded that it is a thing ready-to-hand (i.e., we are reminded of its ontological status). To the degree that GIS succeeds in ‘delivering’ the world as a manageable totality, we are less attentive to what is left out of the GIS construct, what is concealed and distorted. The very success of GIS – at least, as measured by its own self-validating standards – imposes on humans the task of being especially reflective regarding it. Our stance towards it need not be adversarial; rather, the approaches described above suggest how a zoocentric perspective can usefully inform the application of GIS to the natural environment and its many habitats. The Human Animal as Fiduciary Of course, all of what is said above about taking the animal ‘viewpoint’ into account presupposes not only that humans care for non-human animals but also that humans are able to perceive things from a zoocentric perspective. I use the term ‘fiduciary’ for those who would stand in for the animal in relationship to GIS; generally speaking, one who stands in for another is a fiduciary. Such a fiduciary can stand for the non-human animal to the degree that she can stand in the place of the animal. Standing in the place of the animal is what Heidegger calls transposition. With his analysis of transposition and related phenomena, Heidegger makes it possible for us to see the need for and possibility of a fiduciary role. Why does the animal need a fiduciary? As Heidegger has helped us see, the animal is captive within its paraworld. Its ‘notion’ of risk is defined entirely by what threatens the fulfilment of its instinctual drives

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within the ring of its environment. The animal does not know the things within its Umwelt as things present-at-hand – nor, for that matter, does it know its captivation as such, thematically. The significance of things for animals is a function of instinctual givens – of what is biologically rooted, pre-given, ahistorical. The risk presented by technology to the animal in the wild, however, is not from something within its Umwelt. It is, rather, a risk to the Umwelt as such: that the Umwelt will not be perceived at all or as such by those who have dispositive power over it. Animal perception precludes appreciation of the present-at-handedness of things, but it is precisely the present-at-handedness of things, as constructed by GIS, that threatens the animal-space. The present-athand or represented space of GIS threatens to cover over the animal’s lived space. The risk here is with the concealment and distortion of the environment by a technology meant to preserve the environment. The uniform mathematized space of the GIS construct imposes itself on the diversity of habitats. The distinctive lived differences of the many animal Umwelten within the scope and take of a GIS project are reduced to common measures that leave out of account how it is that different species of animals relate experientially to their respective habitats. Of course, it is entirely possible that the omissions, concealments, misdirections, and distortions that GIS makes possible will not be recognized or understood by its users. We humans who are able to step back from our concernful dealing with things to grasp the world in its totality and its character as world may fail to do so. The animal, which is poor in the world, however, is constitutionally incapable of grasping its situation at any scale, beginning with its immediate situation as a being captivated and driven. The animal can react to a particular disturbance of its space that may be the unintended result of a well-intentioned plan to manage the natural environment. It cannot, however, deal with a risk to its way of being in its totality and in its essential aspect: a threat that is a function of the re-presentation of the environment – the very space the animal constitutes – as a totality present-at-hand. If the risk is to be perceived and addressed, it falls to the human being to see it and deal with it. There is another threat. GIS gives itself as something ready-to-hand, as a ‘mega-tool.’ Its tool character is such that it levels off the reality it represents to the uniform condition of things merely present-at-hand together in its mathematical space. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, the totality of things present-at-hand together within the systemic purview of GIS becomes accessible to GIS users as ready-to-hand! The ad-

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ditional ontological risk is that the natural environment, reconfigured and reduced to the specifications of GIS, will be taken as ready-to-hand material for the purposes that GIS users bring to a project. The animal inhabitant of an environment within the purview of GIS suffers a twofold risk: that its surrounding world will be levelled off and covered over in a GIS imaging of the world as a totality of things present-at-hand, and that its environment will lend itself as material for human exploitation in the mode of the ready-to-hand. Both risks are ones to which the animal is oblivious. It depends on the human to see and address each. The human fiduciary, however, is not risk free. In her role as fiduciary, the GIS user must free herself from unthinking complicity in what may be only tacit purposes insinuating themselves into a GIS project. How is it possible, ontologically speaking, for a human fiduciary to help? In his 1929–30 lecture course dealing with animal being, Heidegger tells us that the human being has (a) world, is ‘world forming,’ and that this means that human being-in-the-world, Dasein, can understand things as present-at-hand (FC 274). World is precisely that which makes beings manifest as beings, that is, in their being: ‘The manifestness of beings as such, of beings as beings, belongs to world’ (FC 274). It is this understanding that distinguishes the human animal from the non-human animal. Beyond marking the difference between human and non-human animals, manifestness also makes possible any ‘experiencing [of] this or that particular being as determined in this or that particular way’ (FC 274). Heidegger is saying that the many ways in which beings have being can become manifest only within the manifestness of world, only on the basis of a manifestness of beings as being. Heidegger goes on to identify this manifestness, via the phenomenon of world, with the presence-at-hand of what is present-at-hand. ‘Where there is world, there beings are manifest,’ Heidegger begins; he continues, ‘the beings that surround us are uniformly manifest as simply something present-at-hand in the broadest sense’ (FC 275). This character of being present-at-hand he calls ‘an essential character of beings as they spread themselves before us in our everydayness’; it is into their ‘widespread presence-at-hand’ that we are drawn in human everydayness’ (FC 275). Summing up the above, we can say that world or the manifestness of beings as beings or the presence-at-hand of things is a necessary condition for understanding being not only as presence-athand but in all the many ways of its being. Now, we can begin to see how human Dasein (or being-in-the-world, properly speaking) can comprehend the ontological risk or threat to

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animals, why it falls to human being-in-the-world to understand what poses a risk to non-human Umwelten. What is vital here is not that aspect of being-in-the-world which Heidegger emphasizes in Being and Time, that is, readiness-to-hand. What enables Dasein to comprehend the ontological risk to non-human animal being in the wild is Dasein’s being able to regard the world as a world of things present-at-hand. Irony follows upon irony here. Presence-at-hand is not disparaged as a deficient mode of being-in-the-world, and furthermore, in this interpretation, presence-at-hand would become the very antidote to the presence-at-hand that renders GIS threatening in the first place! Understanding the present-at-hand as such gives Dasein a measure of freedom that non-human animals lack – they are ‘poor in the world.’ From the standpoint of presence-at-hand, human being-in-the-world can understand the many ways in which beings have their being. Within the world of manifest beings, Heidegger continues, ‘there are certain fundamentally diverse “kinds of beings”’ (FC 275). From what follows immediately, we can see that Heidegger is not merely speaking taxonomically of different species of animals; he is not speaking from the standpoint of classification at all (Heidegger puts the word ‘kinds’ in quotation marks). It becomes clear that the ontological diversity Heidegger means is that of manifold relations and contexts in which things present themselves and we come to deal with them: the kinds of beings ‘prescribe certain contexts in which we take up a fundamentally different position, even if we do not become conscious of the this diversity as a matter of course’ (FC 275). Being as presence-at-hand, then, is pivotal to what is called here the human’s fiduciary role. It is from the standpoint of presence-at-hand that we can understand and address the other modes of being in play: animal captivation in its surrounding world, the ready-to-handedness of the ready-to-hand, and the present-at-handedness constituted in the application of GIS. Clarifications are in order. The presence-at-hand that humans experience in their everydayness is quite different from that presence-at-hand which is systematically produced in a GIS project. In the lecture course, it is clear that presence-at-hand refers to an unthematized relationship to things that serves as a ‘horizon’ (Heidegger does not use that word) for understanding other ‘particular’ ways and ‘contexts’ in which we may take up relationships with things. The present-at-hand as it figures in GIS, by contrast, is the product of a procedure or method in which the whole of reality is explicitly objectivated, is made into the repre-

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sentation of a representing subject. Both modes of presence-at-hand present beings as uniformly manifest and as merely there, alongside one another. For the GIS user, however, any other kind of being has been methodically excluded. For the human being in her everyday being, other ways of being seem implicit in the phenomenon of presence-athand. Even regarding everyday presence-at-hand, however, Heidegger sounds a warning note. He attributes to it a power that can make of it a ‘deadly enemy of philosophy’ (FC 275). Human beings, therefore, cannot take the present-at-hand for granted. Taking it for granted would mean assuming a comportment (Verhalten) to things that does not awaken ‘fundamental relationships’ to things that ‘correspond to the proper character of the beings in question’ (FC 276). Without elaboration or explanation, Heidegger describes an unawakened comportment to things as present-at-hand as a ‘rampant’ and ‘uprooted’ perspective that is ‘successful everywhere.’ A proper sense of the presence-at-hand of things would not be ‘grounded upon’ but rather would arise ‘from out of’ the everyday experience of things present-at-hand: ‘we should merely learn to see that from out of this everydayness – although certainly not grounded or sustained by it – fundamental relationships of human Dasein toward beings, amongst which man himself belongs, are possible, i.e., are capable of being awakened’ (FC 276). The presence-at-hand that would allow the human being to serve as a fiduciary for non-human animals is neither the one constructed by GIS nor an everyday sense of the presence-at-hand that is unaware of itself. The presence-at-hand needed is an awakened understanding of being in its many ways of being that arises from – and, we should add, frees itself from – the everyday experience of being as presence-athand. Complicity in the onto-epistemological premises of the essence of technology is precisely that which allows the essence of technology to dominate – and to captivate Dasein and animal life within the Gestell. Before presence-at-hand can release us and our animal others from such captivity, it must free itself from the captivation of its own everyday mode. The presence-at-hand that makes possible the fiduciary role described here is an awakened sense of the presence-at-hand of things in which the being of beings in their being is manifest. It is not enough that Dasein be removed from the animal Umwelt if Dasein is to play the role of responsible fiduciary for the non-human members of the animal kingdom. To be sure, the human being cannot allow itself to be captivated, as the non-human animal is, within the Umwelt; the human must stand apart from the animal Umwelt. Nev-

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ertheless, if the human animal is to stand for the non-human animal other, the human must be able to stand in the place of her animal other. What Heidegger says about transposition has bearing here. He begins by saying that ‘transposing oneself into [a] being means going along with what it is and with how it is. Such going along with means directly learning how it is with this being, discovering what it is like to be this being with which we are going along in this way’ (FC 202). Transposition is neither a matter of ‘factical transference’ into another being (FC 202), nor a ‘mere thought experiment’ (FC 203). It is a process that, Heidegger says, ‘transpires in thought’ as an ‘as if’ process, that is, one in which we ‘merely act as if we were the other being’ (FC 203). All of this is useful in narrowing down Heidegger’s meaning, but leaves unthought the underlying ontological bases for transposing. What is it about the being of the human animal and the being of the non-human animal that makes it possible for the human to transpose itself into the animal? Heidegger tells us that transposing is ‘in principle’ possible for the human; in fact, it is ‘not meaningfully in question for him’ (FC 207). Again, this is helpful and supports the idea that we are addressing an intrinsic possibility, at least from the side of the human. Fuller clarification comes when Heidegger introduces the phenomenon of a sphere of transposibility and identifies this with the animal’s Umwelt. Because the animal already always transposes itself into this sphere, a sphere that is both like and unlike the human world, the human being enjoys the intrinsic possibility of transposing herself into the animal’s sphere (FC 211). Let me venture the following extended paraphrase. Animal life is not something hidden or opaque. It is overt and manifest in the relationship the animal enjoys with its surroundings (albeit under the aegis of instinct and drive). Because the animal is not lacking altogether in world but is poor in world, both has and does not have world, the human, who most properly has world, can go along with the animal. Going-along-with can now be understood as an attending to the animal’s behaviour, movement, and expression as these, in turn, attend to what is transpiring in the surrounding world of the animal, a ‘world’ that meshes enough with my own human world to allow me to make sense of the animal’s life. Heidegger gives the example of a domesticated dog in its relationship to humans within a household. The dog’s behaviour may not have quite the meaning that we attribute to it – we eat/dine whereas the dog feeds – but the dog’s Umwelt and our world overlap enough, both with respect to the things they encompass and the ways in which objects and behaviours present

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themselves, that the human enjoys access to the dog’s ‘world’ – and the dog, for its part, ‘understands’ our human behaviour (FC 210). Let me recap and relate transposition to presence-at-hand. Heidegger tells us that Dasein is able to transpose itself into the animal Umwelt, and he explains how this is possible. More than that, however, his extensive descriptions of animal encirclement help illustrate the ability to do precisely what Heidegger says Dasein is able to do. If Dasein were fully animal in its being, then presumably it would be held captive by encirclement in its environment. Conversely, if Dasein only perceived things as present-at-hand, it would have no notion of how things are for the non-human animal. It is not enough – perhaps it is even misleading – to say that Dasein has a foot in both worlds, animal and human. The more telling point to be made is that the present-at-handedness of things – or more precisely, the free space opened up by the regard for things as present-at-hand – is that which allows the significance of things as environmentally significant for animals to be understood. There are not two realms side by side that have to be reconciled. Rather, presence-athand is the free space within which the explicit significance of the instinctually determined being of things within the animal environment can be understood. The human can only serve as a fiduciary for the animal in relation to the threat and risk posed by GIS if the human does not unthinkingly acquiesce in the ready-to-hand projects of its own everyday being-inthe-world. If the environmental management projects we seek to realize with the help of GIS technology are simply informed by purposes embedded in Dasein’s projects, then we have no reason to expect that what results from environmental management will take into account the needs of animal inhabitants of the wild. The awakened presenceat-hand that Heidegger equates with the manifestness of beings as such frees the would-be human fiduciary as much from the readinessto-hand of its everyday being-in-the-world as it gives entrée to understanding the Umwelt of the animal without captivating the human as it does the non-human animal. If there is a captivation to be feared, it is that which results from the seductive power of GIS technology to provide a commanding knowledge of the planet answerable to whatever tasks we give it. It is this ‘hold’ on us that awakened presence-at-hand works to break. In the language of Being and Time, regarding the totality of beings in the mode of presence-at-hand operates so that ‘the worldly character of the ready-to-hand gets specifically deprived of its worldhood’ (BT-M 147). This reads like an unhappy outcome, and the author of Being and Time arguably means it to be understood that way.

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Moreover, in Being and Time Heidegger sees presence-at-hand as an obstacle to understanding Dasein in its character as concernful dealing with things as ready-to-hand. In the 1929–30 lecture course, however, Heidegger articulates the ontological ‘utility’ of presence-to-hand as affording access to the manifestness of beings as such. The pragmatically disengaged regard for beings as ‘merely’ present-at-hand arguably frees us from the claims of the equipmental totality, thus freeing us for other ways in which beings may gives themselves to us. Towards the end of the lecture course, Heidegger refers to a ‘being free for beings as such’ (FC 339) and to a ‘pre-logical being open for beings’ (FC 343). In the elucidation of both phenomena, Heidegger builds on the notion of the ‘manifestness of beings as such,’ an expression that links with presence-at-hand (FC 275). If these linkages are not merely adventitious and semantic but rather rooted in the phenomenon of presenceat-hand itself, then one must see presence-at-hand as a free space that frees Dasein from its entanglements with things and that frees Dasein for a thoughtful reception for being in its manifold ways of being. Heidegger’s lecture course of 1929–30 and this interpretation of it suggests a different understanding of the present-at-hand and of science than what one normally understands as Heideggerian positions. First, the present-at-hand is understood not as the totality of things present-at-hand but rather as the being of things present-at-hand – that is, presence-at-hand. The point to be made here is not that the presentat-handedness of the present-at-hand constitutes the being of beings as such – a way of being that would pre-scribe what counts and that can only count as being. What appears new here is the idea that presentat-handedness could – and should – serve as a radical hypothesis, one that opens up a space within which the implicit meanings of things can come to expression. Towards the end of the Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (QT 28), Heidegger quotes Hölderlin: Where danger is, grows the saving power also.

These two lines, as used by Heidegger, have inspired many interpretations. I will not venture yet another one. I would suggest, however, that the reflection undertaken here traces a path from a kind of danger (Gefahr) to a kind of saving power (das Rettende). Danger here is understood more precisely as risk, and ‘rescue’ seems better suited than

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‘salvation’ to describe what I have called the fiduciary role of humans. The ontological risk of GIS can be mitigated by a fiduciary stance on the part of human beings. The application of GIS to the natural environment – understood as a lived space for ourselves and our animal others – poses ontological risks or dangers. To say ‘ontological’ is to suggest that these dangers are rooted in the nature of the technology discussed here, GIS. To say ‘risk’ is to suggest that the consequences of using GIS are not unavoidable and need not be adverse. There is great promise in the technology as indicated by its performance. But its very record of performance can lull us into an unthinking use of a powerful tool and obscure the risks that threaten the very environmental project that GIS supports. Both risk and promise arise from an onto-epistemological understanding of the terms in play. The risk of GIS owes to the way in which it unobtrusively reconfigures the being of the natural environment and our relationship or way of being towards it. Likewise, the promise of a fiduciary stance depends on how we humans understand our being-in-the-world with animal others. Both risk and promise grow from an understanding that would understand, essentially, how things stand with being in its re-presentation through GIS, as well as how the very understanding of being that ‘defines’ our being as human beings offers promise for those animals whose being is at risk. Heidegger pairs the two lines cited above with another quotation, of one line, from Hölderlin: ‘poetically man dwells on the earth’ (QT 34). Is the pairing of quotations intended to pair the terms, technology and earth, to suggest that how we think about technology – the essence of technology – bears in a most essential way on how we dwell upon the earth? The task here has been to think technology and earth and to respond to the ‘issues’ raised in the poetry. But the conclusion of Heidegger’s own philosophical reflection on technology and earth locates these two within an underlying poetic reflection on dwelling. While we cannot begin to address dwelling as such at the conclusion of this reflection on the ‘management’ of the earth, we do well to remember that the more basic issue is how we shall dwell on an earth that is home and habitat, a site for world and Umwelt.

NOTES 1 Charles Convis, Jr., ed., Conservation Geography: Case Studies in GIS, Computer Mapping, and Activism (Redlands: ESRI, 2001), first page of ‘Introduction,’ not numbered.

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2 Will Allen, ‘The Conservation Fund,’ in Conservation Geography, 74–5. 3 Lawrence G. Frank, ‘Laikipia Predator Project, Kenya,’ in Conservation Geography, 167. 4 Andy Plumptre, ‘Use of ArcView GIS in the Africa Program,’ in Conservation Geography, 168. 5 Michelle Kinzel, ‘Tracking Sea Turtles: Conservation from Space,’ in Conservation Geography, 156–9. 6 Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics – World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeil and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 261–4. Heidegger refers to Uexküll as a biologist who took the ‘decisive step’ of developing ‘insight into the way the organism is necessarily bound up with its environment.’ In Section 61b, where he discusses Uexküll’s concepts explicitly and at some length, he takes the opportunity, against the background of Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, to reiterate his position: ‘The organism can adapt a particular environment into itself only insofar as openness for … belong to its essence.’ 7 Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Alfred Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 58. 8 Mark MacAlister, ‘African Elephant Monitoring Project,’ in Conservation Geography, 101. 9 Ian Heywood, Sarah Cornelius, and Steve Carver, An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), 22. 10 Ibid., 11–12. 11 Ibid., 61. 12 Ibid., 12. 13 Carolynn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1983). 14 Ariel Salleh, ‘Working with Nature: Reciprocity or Control?’ Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. Michael E. Zimmerman (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998), 315–23.

8 Humanity as Shepherd of Being: Heidegger’s Philosophy and the Animal Other donald turner

I. Introduction A major debate in environmental philosophy concerns the question of how to think about the ontological and ethical status of non-human animals.1 This is a problem because, like us, non-human animals are sentient beings; in other words, they have subjective lives – a fact that would seem to require granting them special ethical status. Yet at the same time, the radical differences between their form of subjectivity and ours, especially in cognitive ability, leads some thinkers to regard nonhuman animals as mere tools, clothes, or foodstuffs. Martin Heidegger himself contributes to the confusion in his writing on non-human animals; at times he describes animals as ‘poor in world,’ yet elsewhere he provides conceptual tools that help justify granting them more ethical status than this designation might seem to warrant. Nevertheless, these questions can be fruitfully regarded in light of Heidegger’s philosophy, which illuminates them in two fundamental ways. First, he provides new ways to think about the ontological status of non-human animals. Heidegger devoted more text than any other giant of twentieth-century Continental philosophy to questions about the ontological status of non-humans, and his writings help ‘recover’ approaches to these questions from their situation in most modern philosophy, both by rescuing these questions from the confines of dominant Western philosophical assessment and by ‘re-covering’ them with the cloak of mystery that has been stripped away by modern philosophy. Whereas modern philosophy assumes that it has completely exposed these questions with the clear light of objective reason, Heidegger insists that the answers such thinking provides are fundamentally lim-

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ited, and so these questions still pose themselves. Because he wrote so much about non-human animals, charting his philosophical speculations about them is a complex task, especially since his language evolves as he grapples with the matter. Furthermore, the differences among his various formulations of basic questions about non-human animals’ being are themselves instructive, because they reflect the fundamental ambiguity that characterizes the Western philosophical treatment of these questions. Second, Heidegger’s writings are ethically instructive, in that they provide themes that promote a reassessment of non-human animals’ ethical status – even when such a reassessment contradicts his explicit goals. In other words, I argue that applying Heidegger’s own thinking to his statements about the ethical status of animals allows one to draw different conclusions from the ones he himself draws. This chapter has two purposes: (1) to briefly present the evolution of Heidegger’s thinking about animality, and (2) to consider ways that Heidegger’s writings can inspire people to live ethically with regard to non-human animals. II. Heidegger on the Ontological Status of Non-Human Animals Reflecting the fundamental dichotomy in ethical theory between Kantian thinking and utilitarianism, most discourse about non-human animals in the Western tradition has roots in the thinking of either Immanuel Kant or Jeremy Bentham. Both thinkers assumed that all fundamentally relevant features of non-human animal being had already been discovered and were easily elucidated. For Bentham, non-human animals’ sentience – their capacity to feel pain – entitled them to direct ethical consideration, while for Kant, non-human animals’ dearth of rationality excluded them from the realm of beings owed this.2 The same fundamental assumption – that non-human animals’ being was a fairly easy question to settle before formulating an ethical position – has generated permutations that differently combine utilitarian and Kantian, pro- and anti-animal aspects (e.g., Tom Regan’s quasi-Kantian pro–animal-rights position and Jan Narveson’s utilitarian defence of the status quo with regard to their large-scale scientific and commercial treatment).3 In his lengthiest section of text devoted to non-human animal being, and in keeping with his common return to basic questions that the Western philosophical tradition has purported to have settled, Heidegger declares that non-human animals and their experiences

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‘are infinitely difficult for us to grasp’ and ‘have a peculiar fundamental character of their own, the metaphysical significance of which has never properly been perceived or understood before’ (FC 198). This was written comparatively early, for a lecture course in 1929–30; a similar allusion to the difficulty of understanding non-human animal experience from nearly twenty years later (1947) shows that Heidegger continued to view thinking concerning non-human animals’ ontological status as an important problem: ‘Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures, because on the one hand they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and on the other are at the same separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss’ (BW 230). According to this view, part of the conceptual difficulty of how to treat non-human animals lies in the fact that they are both like and unlike human beings in important ways. Where Kantian and Benthamite treatments of non-human animal being focus on either one or the other aspect of this relationship, which they see as obvious and requiring only brief explanation – identity (for Bentham) and difference (for Kant) – Heidegger’s writings explore both aspects, and they do so in much greater detail than those of his predecessors. His evolving attempts to formulate his thinking about non-human animals reflect conceptual difficulties that he repeatedly acknowledges, and among the changes, one can detect a subtle shift in his estimation of the ontological status of non-human animals: more and more, he focuses on the gulf that separates human from non-human animal being. Heidegger’s earliest works include phrasings that describe humans and other animals with similar language. For example, in his lectures on Dilthey from 1925, Heidegger distinguishes ‘the Dasein of life’ from the being of inanimate objects: ‘The primal giveness of Dasein is that it is in a world … Every living being has its environing world as something that is not present-to-hand next to it, but rather is here [da] disclosed, uncovered for it. This world can be very simple for the primitive animal … [but] the animal has a world. In the same way we ourselves are also always in a world such that it is disclosed for us … all life is here [da] in such a way that the world is also here [da] for it.’4 In another lecture course from the same year, he provides a phenomenological analysis of a snail’s ‘being-in-the-world.’ Describing this animal’s stretching itself out of its shell and towards something, he writes: ‘Does the snail thereby first enter into a relation of being with the world? No! Its crawling out is but a local modification of its already-being-in-

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the-world … It does not first add a world to itself by touching; rather, it touches because its being means nothing other than to be in a world. This applies similarly to a subject to which knowing is ascribed.’5 Thus Heidegger explains that humans share with non-human animals a fundamental fact about their existence. Similarly, in the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, from 1925, he insists that non-human animals, like human beings, do not exist first in isolation and later encounter a world; rather, their existence is always already some form of being ‘in-the-world.’ In Being and Time, from 1927, however, Heidegger draws attention to the radical distinction between human and non-human being, reserving the application of ideas such as Dasein to humans alone. By the time he gave his 1934–5 lecture course on Hölderlin, the shift in emphasis was firmly established, and he sharply distinguished humans from all other beings: ‘The jump from living animal to speaking human is as large as, or larger than, that from lifeless stone to living being’ (GA 39:75).6 Nearly a decade later, in his 1942–3 lectures on Parmenides, Heidegger put it this way: ‘Man and man alone … sees into the open … In contrast, the animal neither sees nor does it ever catch sight of the open, in the sense of the unconcealment of what is unconcealed … The animal is excluded [ausgeschlossen] from the essential domain of the strife between unconcealment and concealment. The sign of this essential exclusion is that no animal and no kind of vegetation “has the word” [hat das Wort], that is to say, “takes the floor” in order to “speak its piece”’ (GA 54:237).7 This emphasis on language as the essential factor in human being and as the privileged mode of being itself remains central in Heidegger’s work from this point forward.8 In his ‘Letter on Humanism’ from 1947, Heidegger remarks that because non-human animals lack language, they are excluded from ‘the clearing of Being which alone is “world”’ (BW 230). Similarly, in a lecture course from 1951–2, Heidegger discusses the ‘abyss of essence’ that separates the human hand from the mere ‘grasping organ’ of the ape: ‘Only a being who can speak, that is, think, can have hands and can be handy in achieving works of handicraft’ (of which language is, for Heidegger, a special type) (WCT 16). Heidegger’s use of the word ‘life’ (Leben) provides another example of this shift in emphasis. In a lecture course from 1919–20, Heidegger speaks freely of human Leben, but by the time of the Nietzsche lectures, he has dropped this phrasing in favour of the familiar Dasein.9 Here, as in the Kant–Bentham dichotomy, Heidegger’s work exem-

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plifies the basic ambiguity that pervades Western treatment of nonhuman animals. All of this should not be taken as indicating a dramatic reversal in Heidegger’s thought. Rather, a subtle shift develops as Heidegger’s thinking evolves, with earlier works more often applying certain terms to both humans and other animals, and later works more often emphasizing distinctions between the two realms. But however greatly Heidegger’s actual views changed over the years, many of his writings from the late 1920s onward clearly make a fundamental distinction between humans and non-human animals. Heidegger writes in a number of places about the ontological status of non-human animals. That said, his lengthiest examination of this question – and the most instructive for understanding his basic vision of the difference between humanity and other animal species – is found in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, a series of lectures he gave during the winter semester of 1929–30, between the time of the relatively brief consideration of the snail’s Dasein in 1925 and the radical leap described in the Hölderlin lectures of 1933–4. In those lectures, Heidegger devotes more than one hundred pages to describing non-human animal experience in relation to that of humanity. Those lectures highlight two aspects of the human–non-human animal relationship – similarity and difference – in an attempt to discover that which ‘constitutes the essence of the animality of the animal and the essence of the humanity of man and through what sorts of questions we can hope to pinpoint the essence of such beings at all’ (FC 179). In this text, Heidegger describes the existential differences in three modes of being – (1) inanimate objects, (2) all non-human animals, and (3) human beings – all with regard to the concept of ‘world,’ which he attributes to the snail in 1925 but by 1952 withholds even from the ape. His formulation here in 1929–30 captures both points, as he puts it: ‘The animal … reveals itself as a being which both has and does not have world’ (ibid., 199). According to Heidegger’s formulation here, non-human animals are ‘world-poor’ (weltarm), in contrast to inanimate objects such as stones, which are ‘worldless’ (weltlos). Again in contrast, human beings are ‘world-forming’ (welt-bildend). Regarding the distinction between non-human animals and inanimate objects, Heidegger writes: ‘Neither the stone nor the animal has world. But this not-having of world is not to be understood in the same sense in each case. The different expressions worldlessness and poverty in world already indicate that there is indeed a distinction here … Poverty in

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world implies a deprivation of world. Worldlessness on the other hand is constitutive of the stone in the sense that the stone cannot even be deprived of something like a world’ (ibid., 196). This is because the stone is ‘essentially without access’ to other beings at all – unlike, for example, the sunbathing lizard, which has at least a limited access to other entities, such as rocks and the sun (ibid., 197). However, the difference between the access of humans to their world and the ‘world-poor’ status of non-human animals is more complex. Heidegger writes: ‘Poor in world implies poverty as opposed to richness; poverty implies less as opposed to more. The animal is poor in world, it somehow possesses less. Less in respect of what is accessible to it, of whatever as an animal it can deal with, of whatever it can be affected by as an animal, of whatever it can relate to as a living being. Less as against more, namely as against the richness of all those relationships that human Dasein has at its disposal’ (ibid., 193). However, this greater richness is not, according to Heidegger, a matter of ‘a purely quantitative difference’ (ibid., 195). While both humans and non-human animals have access to beings in the world, the difference between human and animal being is more radical than this relatively insignificant similarity: ‘This closest proximity of the two essential constitutions [human and animal] is merely deceptive … an abyss lies between them, an abyss that cannot be bridged by any kind of mediation in any way at all’ (ibid., 282).10 This rather extreme statement indicates that for Heidegger, whatever similarities exist between humans and animals, there also exists an essential difference in kind, not merely one of degree. He is uncomfortable with essential definitions of humanity that describe humans as animals of a particular type, such as the animal rationale and the ‘tool-making’ animal. Heidegger views humans not as animals with a special ability that other animals lack, but as sites of existential possibilities so radically different from those of any non-human animal that the difference between human and non-human animal being is far vaster than the difference between any other pair of animal species. Statements such as this one about the abyss that separates humans from other animals suggest a rather pessimistic view of the human ability to comprehend non-human animal experience (and vice versa). But Heidegger softens this view somewhat when he writes at length about whether and how one might ‘transpose’ oneself onto a non-human animal being. For Heidegger, transposing oneself onto another being ‘means going along with what it is and with how it is … directly learn-

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ing how it is with this being, discovering what it is like to be this being’ (ibid., 202). Heidegger discusses this concept with respect to other humans, non-human animals, and inanimate objects. For Heidegger, the question concerning the possibility of transposing oneself onto another human being is fundamentally redundant, because ‘being with’ other humans is an intrinsic part of the essential constitution of human Dasein. (Heidegger contrasts his own thought here with that of people such as Kant – i.e., people whose thinking neglects this essential aspect of the human constitution because of ‘the illusion of prior separation between one human being and another [that] is reinforced by the philosophical dogma that man is initially to be understood as subject and as consciousness, that he is primarily and most indubitably given to himself as consciousness for a subject’ [ibid., 208].) The question concerning the possibility of transposing oneself onto an inanimate object such as a stone is meaningless because it is impossible in principle, for the stone has no phenomenological sphere onto which such transposition could occur. For Heidegger, though the transposition ‘is not an actual process but rather one that merely transpires in thought,’ the question of transposition is not meaningless with regard to non-human animals, because they do have such a phenomenological sphere (ibid., 202). After these preliminary remarks regarding this process, Heidegger extends his discussion of the fundamental structure of non-human animal being, exploring several implications of non-human animals’ poverty in world – their essential ‘deprivation.’ The fundamental aspect of world of which non-human animals are deprived is what commentators have called the ‘as-structure’ – the capacity to comprehend entities as entities, or to comprehend anything ‘as such.’ This is directly related to the unique linguistic capability of human beings. Here is how Heidegger describes this situation: When we say that the lizard is lying on the rock, we ought to cross out the word ‘rock’ in order to indicate that whatever the lizard is lying on is certainly given in some way for the lizard, and yet it is not known to the lizard as a rock. If we cross out the word we do not simply mean to imply that something else is in question here or is taken as something else. Rather we imply that whatever it is is not accessible to it as a being. The blade of grass that the beetle crawls up, for example, is not a blade of grass for it at all; it is not something possibly destined to become part of the bundle of hay with which the peasant will feed his cow. The blade of grass is simply a beetle-path on which the beetle specifically seeks beetle-nourishment, and not just any edible matter in general. (ibid., 198)

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In other words, as Heidegger explains with another example, while there is ample evidence that a bee can recognize the presence of honey, there is none that the bee recognizes the honey ‘as present’ (ibid., 241). What does it mean for one being to comprehend another being ‘as’ a being – or ‘as’ the particular type of being it most truly is? Heidegger suggests that the lizard does not have access to the rock as rock or the sun as sun because it cannot ponder mineralogical or astrophysical questions about these entities (ibid., 197–8). The lizard has some relationship to these entities, but there is a crucial difference for Heidegger between its radically limited ‘access’ to them and the access that human beings have, for humans are able to recognize such beings as beings. For Heidegger, such recognition seems to mean the capacity to take a position with regard to these beings in a way that allows distinguishing between oneself and the entity one encounters. This difference constitutes the fundamental abyss that separates human beings from all other animals: ‘For it is not simply a question of qualitative otherness of the animal world as compared with the human world, and especially not a question of quantitative distinctions in range, depth, and breadth – not a question of whether or how the animal takes what is given to it in a different way, but rather of whether the animal can apprehend something as something, something as a being, at all’ (ibid., 264).11 This particular deprivation in non-human animal experience is linked with a second aspect of non-human animals’ ‘poverty’: their deprivation of a certain freedom connected with their ‘world,’ a freedom that only humans possess. While humans are freely ‘world-forming’ beings, non-human animals are not, and for Heidegger, ‘captivation’ (Benommenheit) is the ‘essential structure of the animal’ and the ‘fundamental essence of the organism’ (ibid., 239, 258). This captivation is linked with their being deprived of the ‘as-structure’: ‘The captivation of the animal … signifies, in the first place, essentially having every apprehending of something as something withheld from it’ (ibid., 247). Thus, nonhuman animals are kept in a state of ‘captivation’ by the very things to which they lack access ‘as such’: their environments, other beings within their environments, and themselves.12 One might classify these forms of captivation as ‘internal’ and ‘external.’ Regarding the latter form, Heidegger writes: ‘Throughout the course of its life the animal is confined to its environmental world, immured as it were within a fixed sphere’ (ibid., 198). In this context, Heidegger again discusses the bee, this time noting that if a bee is provided access to a supply of honey larger than its abdomen can hold, it will suck from this source to satiety, then cease sucking and fly away.

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But if the bee’s abdomen is sliced away, and the honey allowed to flow straight through and out of the bee, then the bee will continue sucking incessantly. Heidegger argues that this conclusively shows that the bee recognizes neither the overabundance of honey nor the absence of its abdomen – that instead, ‘the bee is simply taken [hingenommen] by its food’ and that this ‘excludes the possibility of any recognition of presence’ and ‘prevents the animal from taking up a position over against this food’ (ibid., 252). This inability is linked with the non-human animal’s ‘internal’ captivation by itself – that is, its inability to consider itself as such: ‘The animal is in precisely such a way that it intrinsically retains itself and is intrinsically absorbed in itself’ (ibid., 238). This form of captivation marks an essential contrast between human and non-human animal being: ‘We shall reserve the expression “self” and selfhood to characterize the specifically human peculiarity, its particular way of being proper to itself … The way and manner in which the animal is proper to itself is not that of personality, not reflection or consciousness, but simply its proper being’ (ibid., 233). Thus, human beings are essentially reflective, whereas non-human animals are captivated by an internal existential limitation in this regard, never meditating about either themselves or their relationships with other beings. Heidegger employs the notions of ‘inhibition’ and ‘disinhibition’ to further describe the way non-human animals’ ‘behaviour’ is ‘driven activity’ rather than ‘comportment’ (ibid., 242). In other words, as Heidegger puts it, ‘there is no apprehending’ (Vernehmen), but only a behaving (Benehmen) (ibid., 247). The bee, for example, is captivated by the honey that it consumes until it is sated, at which point it is captivated by the instinct to fly back towards the hive. In neither case does the bee experience a ‘recognitive self directing towards’ the objects in question, because the bee lacks both self-consciousness and the concomitant ability to recognize these objects as objects (ibid., 243). As Heidegger describes it, ‘neither the one nor the other is experienced as being’ (ibid., 248). The bee’s behaviour is not ‘self directed’ but is always a ‘driven directedness’ – driven by instinct rather than personal deliberation; unlike self-directing human beings, non-human animals are captivated by existential or phenomenological limitations that are inherent in the structure of their consciousness. As Heidegger explains, the animal is thus caught in a ‘disinhibiting ring’ that ‘prescribes what can affect or occasion its behaviour’ (ibid., 255). Instinctual drives are inhibited until the animal encounters that which disinhibits or ‘releases the inhibitedness’ of a particular drive,

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allowing other instinctually driven behaviour to occur (ibid.). Such behaviour will occur until the behaviour has satisfied the particular instinctual drive, at which point another drive will prompt another behaviour in the direction of another object that is capable of disinhibiting it. This continuous process composes the entire life of the individual non-human animal: ‘The life of the animal is precisely this struggle [Ringen] to maintain this encircling ring or sphere within which a quite specifically articulated manifold of disinhibitions can arise … This encircling ring belongs to the innermost organization of the animal and its fundamental morphological structure’ (ibid.). To summarize, while non-human animals are like humans in that they have access to beings within their environments, they are held captive within the encircling or disinhibiting cycle that determines all their behaviour. Bedazzled by both their drives and their environments, they can neither recognize nor relate to them as such. Humans, by contrast, do recognize the presence of themselves and other beings as such, as indicated by the very fact that they ask existential questions about themselves and other beings. Because of this dual recognition – and the ability to take a position with regard to themselves and their environments – human beings are uniquely able to form worlds, whereas nonhuman animals are merely captivated by theirs. III. Heideggerian Philosophy and the Ethical Status of Non-Human Animals As I have shown, in his project of reassessing the essence of human being, Heidegger devotes a great deal of text to the essence of other animals, and he consistently draws a clear distinction between humans and other species – a distinction that becomes more pronounced over time. Moving towards my second main purpose – to consider ways that Heidegger’s writings can help inspire people to live ethically with regard to non-human animals – requires us to first acknowledge that many philosophers deem any purported applied Heideggerian ethics to be fundamentally problematic, if not impossible. Fuelling such assessments, Heidegger did not write ethics as ethics is generally understood by many philosophers of the analytic tradition. His approach stands in direct contrast to those represented by Kant and Bentham and their intellectual descendants, which claim primacy for the rational subject as calculator of value and legislator of moral law. Heidegger does not explicitly participate in the debates that occupy these thinkers.

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This has led commentators to declare his work devoid of ethically edifying material with respect to human and non-human animals alike. Emmanuel Levinas, more than any other commentator, sounds this theme repeatedly throughout his writings. Likewise, John Caputo declares that Heidegger ‘let ethical obligations get formalized out of the existential analytic’ and that he was more interested in letting jugs and bridges be than he was in letting other mortal beings be.13 Silvia Benso maintains that Heidegger’s thought is limited to ontological questioning about the meaning of the being of beings to the extent that it ignores specific beings themselves, and that ‘Heidegger’s ear, tuned to the melody of art, is deaf to the song of the earth and its humble inhabitants.’14 But allegations that Heidegger has nothing to offer the applied ethicist overstate the case. It is true that Heidegger seems to write more about being than he writes about beings, yet he himself notes that being is only manifest in beings, where the play of concealment–unconcealment unfolds. Furthermore, he insists that his fundamental ontology ‘is in itself the original ethics’ (BW 258). As fundamental, the ‘thinking that inquires into the truth of Being is neither ethics nor ontology … neither theoretical nor practical,’ because it precedes these distinctions (ibid., 259). In other words, this mode of thinking allows being to unfold and attempts to describe its fundamental phenomenological significance. It operates prior to secondary gestures according to which one places something theoretically within a pre-established terminological context or speculates about something’s practical usefulness for accomplishing worldly tasks. For Heidegger, such an orientation characterizes the fundamentally responsible approach to existents; moreover, it involves processes that occur before one engages in the production of rational theories, ethical evaluations, and the like. Thus, Heidegger rarely makes statements that readers would recognize as explicitly ethical. Still, one might hope that having one’s ontology oriented rightly might help one’s attempts to live responsibly and appropriately with regard to existence and existents. Along these lines, while some commentators have found Heidegger’s philosophy ethically lacking or troubling, others have located throughout his work conceptual tools that are useful for specifically ethical philosophy, both theoretical and applied. Robert Bernasconi maintains that Heidegger’s work is extensively, albeit implicitly, ethical, and he highlights such implications as they arise in Being and Time.15 Even Benso finds latent ethical implications in Heidegger’s work.16 Even though Heidegger claims priority for his way of thinking over usual modes of ethical philosophy, there is

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always a sense in which ethical questions are involved in Heidegger’s writings, and many commentators have used Heideggerian themes to promote specific ethical agendas. My own project, which engages certain Heideggerian themes that will nourish the context of humans’ relationships with non-human animals, is inspired by a similar belief that despite supposed deficiencies, Heidegger’s thought can inform the type of direct and explicit applied ethics that Heidegger eschews, in the sense that it assesses different modes of thinking that have clear ethical significance. Understandably, most commentators who have noted ethical deficiencies in Heidegger’s writings about non-human animals focus on the longest piece that he devoted to their consideration – the analysis in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics discussed earlier. For example, Alasdair MacIntyre discusses two areas in which Heidegger’s characterization of animals is ‘defective.’17 First, he notes an error of omission in that while Heidegger considers examples of many different animals, including bees, moths, crabs, worms, and lizards, he does not discuss animals with more complex brains, such as apes, elephants, or dolphins. As MacIntyre points out, this absence of such ‘higher’ animals is curious, given that Heidegger’s discussion means to reach conclusions about the essence of ‘animality’ itself.18 MacIntyre also notes that Heidegger’s goal here is itself problematic. Heidegger’s conclusions might be valid for the ‘lower’ animals he describes, but perhaps the attempt to make sweeping generalizations about ‘animality’ itself falls prey to the criticism that Levinas also levelled against Heidegger (albeit with regard to the treatment of humans, not non-human animals): that Heidegger’s analysis overgeneralizes at times that call for attention to uniqueness and individual differences, at least on the level of different species. MacIntyre points out the troubling way in which Heidegger treats ‘the entire realm of non-human animals as homogenous.’19 Second, MacIntyre suggests that Heidegger ‘obscures and misconstrues’ certain ‘perceptual and intentional achievements’ of animals such as apes and dolphins, which seem not only to ‘respond to features of their environment’ (as such features disinhibit instinctual drives), but also to perform activities that Heidegger ignores, including active exploration, identification and classification of objects, and emotional responses such as grieving.20 He points out that Heidegger ignores those types of non-human animals which seem to possess the ‘as structure’ – those types which, for example, discriminate particu-

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lars, recognize individuals, notice their absences, greet their returns, and so on.21 After showing the line between humans and non-human animals to be less sharply defined than Heidegger describes, MacIntyre concludes that even humans’ linguistic capacity is ‘founded upon animal powers’ that are ‘shared with members of some other intelligent species,’ and that, even when we come into the use of our linguistic powers, ‘we never make ourselves independent of our animal nature and inheritance.’22 According to MacIntyre, the line that Heidegger draws is too sharp and hastily demarked, and not recognizing this constitutes another Heideggerian ‘failure’ with regard to the human–animal question.23 Based on these criticisms, MacIntyre characterizes as a ‘rhetorical exaggeration’ Heidegger’s sharp distinction between humans as ‘world forming’ and (all) non-human animals as ‘poor in world.’24 Nevertheless, Heidegger is concerned with distinguishing humans from non-human animals primarily in order to consider what it means to be conscious of the self. Hence it is useful to bring the discussion back to the relationship between Heidegger’s writings about non-human animals and those of thinkers such as Kant and Bentham. Despite Heidegger’s distance from the metaphysical and humanistic tradition that Kant and Bentham represent, his essential distinctions between humans and other animals carry a somewhat Kantian flavour. Heidegger, like Kant, maintains that only humans are self-conscious. Heidegger’s discussion of non-human animal captivation resembles Kant’s picture of the animal as determined by internal impulse and external stimuli, especially when Heidegger contrasts non-human animals’ ‘behaviour’ as ‘instinctual drivenness’ that ‘is not a recognitive self-directing’ with free human ‘comportment’ towards beings that are recognized as such (FC 237, 243). There are obvious links here with Kant’s descriptions of humanity’s unique ‘autonomy,’ where he depicts humans as the only beings capable of resisting the dual influences of internal inclination and external pressure.25 However, Heidegger does not merely echo the distinction that Kant and Bentham emphasize. For example, Heidegger’s and Kant’s pictures of the self differ greatly, in that Kant highlights humanity’s powers of reason in a way that Heidegger undermines. Moreover, even if the difference between humans and animals that Heidegger charts is somewhat similar to the one Kant and Bentham both recognize, Heidegger dwells on certain aspects of this difference at much greater length than either of these other philosophers, who assume that humanity is dis-

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tinguished by its powers of reason and who then debate only about the ethical relevance of this fact. For Heidegger, there is much more to this difference, and his specific formulations of this contrast are especially helpful where my project is concerned, though this latent utility requires a creative contribution to become explicit, as it pertains to ethical questions. To these insights I now turn. IV. Themes in Heidegger’s Later Thought That Help Reassess Non-Human Animals’ Ethical Status Heidegger does not directly enter arguments involving either theoretical or applied ethics as these disciplines are traditionally understood, nor does he specifically address questions that hinge on our assessment of non-human animals’ ethical status. Thus, specific applications of Heidegger’s thought to particular ethical questions necessarily involve creative gestures. While we cannot simply refer to Heidegger’s statements on these questions, we can find themes in his writings that might be applied in this arena. Intriguingly, the supposed ethical deficiency in Heidegger’s work is best resolved with reference to models of thinking that he himself provides. In taking this approach, one finds inspirational ideas from across the span of Heidegger’s career that illuminate problems in many humans’ treatment of non-human animals as well as ways people might live more responsibly towards them. Humans’ treatment of non-human animals is problematic in two distinct ways, indicating (1) problems with our conceptual or linguistic treatment of non-human animals, itself a largely abstract matter, and (2) problems with our practical treatment of non-human animals, part of the realm of applied ethics. Because thinking is essential to humans’ being, insofar as any dealings with the world are informed or affected by some interplay of ideas, it is ironic that our usual ways of thinking also lead us astray in our practical dealings with non-human animals. Heidegger’s later writings on the essence of thought illuminate these matters and provide the foundation for my quasi-Heideggerian philosophy of living thoughtfully with regard to non-human animals. In so doing they shed light on questions of how we think about non-human animals as well as on questions about how we treat them. Along these lines, Heidegger composed lengthy, novel, insightful, and poetic analyses of the nature and experience of non-human animals, and his work is admirable and valuable for reviving questions about non-human animals’ being that influential Western thinkers be-

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fore him handled too facilely. That said, he does not entertain specific questions that morally assess human relationships with other animals. So it is not from his writings about other animals that I draw primary inspiration in describing ethically appropriate ways to think about nonhuman animals and their interests; rather, it is from the broader vision that Heidegger presents of different modes of thoughtful engagement with the world. With these distinctions in view, one can imagine fresh possibilities for approaches to questions about non-human animals’ ethical status that are inspired by and consistent with the kind of thinking that Heidegger approves, even if he does not directly address these questions. In Heidegger’s later thought, I recognize two fundamental movements: one sheds light on potentially problematic and dangerous thinking; the other illuminates modes of thought that might be characterized as more responsible, as not setting upon the world to extract value and power, but responding appropriately to the call that draws us to tend the clearing of being. First, Heidegger distils a negative approach that comprises several types of thinking about which he expresses disapproval or issues warnings. In the corresponding positive movement, Heidegger valorizes and promotes modes of thinking that are more reticent and observatory, modes that he thinks the Western tradition has neglected. Indicating the importance of such distinctions with superlative language, Heidegger contends that the ‘most thought-provoking is that we are still not thinking’ (BW 370). Elsewhere he describes a common ‘flight from thinking’ (DT 45). These statements indicate a sense of danger and a feeling of hope, pointing towards both the possibility for appropriate thinking and humanity’s failures in this regard. Heidegger proposes several designations for modes of thinking that he wishes to delimit or warn against and that are useful for characterizing problematic thinking about other animals; most of these, however, involve a sort of crass and facile ‘calculating’ tendency. In The Principle of Reason, Heidegger warns against the human inclination to ‘consign our speaking to electronic thinking and calculating machines, an occurrence that will lead modern technology and thinking to completely new procedures and unforeseeable results that probably will push reflective thinking aside as something useless and superfluous’ (PR 15). Elsewhere, he focuses explicitly on related or allied modes of thinking promoted in the pursuit of economic or business interests, where ‘language surrenders itself to our mere willing and trafficking as in instrument of domination over beings’ and we encounter them only ‘in a

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calculative businesslike way’ (BW 223). We might sometimes justifiably make calculations about the value of non-human animals’ lives, but Heidegger warns that the ‘instruments of domination’ that he describes dangerously threaten to foreclose other possibilities for thinking differently about the world – for example, those involving poetic inspiration or artistic appreciation. We wrong the world when our businesslike ways treat all beings as nothing but natural resources to be harnessed in support of monetary profit. With regard to non-human animals, such calculative measures reinforce centuries of dominion, and today sheer economic considerations dictate that billions of non-human animals be subjected to a cruel reality: that a business that purveys products made of or derived from non-human animals often can (and usually will) choose to reap more profit by subjecting the animals to more painful and stress-inducing treatment. Heidegger’s clearest elucidations of these kinds of links between ethical questions and commercial enterprises occur in his writings about technology. In his lectures on Nietzsche, from 1936–7, he describes the general way in which techn• contrasts with physis; both are ways that ‘revealing’ or ‘unconcealment’ (aleth•ia) occurs, but while the latter involves natural occurrences without human interference or participation, the former indicates more active human influence in the process – an engagement guided by a ‘kind of knowledge that produces utensils and works of art,’ working to gain ‘mastery over beings’ (N 1:81). In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, from 1949, Heidegger dwells more specifically on techn• as manifest in modern technology, which, ignoring possible artistic modes of bringing reality forth, is dominated by ‘enframing’ (Ge-stell) – a way of revealing entities as ‘standing reserve’ (Bestand), attuned only to the practical use one might put things to or the energy one might extract from them. ‘Enframing’ entails connotations of a ‘framework’ into which reality is forced; and as a calculating, non-reflective process, it reveals beings in dramatically limited ways and threatens to foreclose other possibilities. While some thinkers have proposed that technology makes us human (e.g., the characterization Homo faber in the thought of Karl Marx), Heidegger speaks more to the dangers of technological thinking when it is caught in the way in which beings reveal themselves in enframing, which ‘endanger[s] man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is’ and ‘banishes man into the kind of revealing that is an ordering’ of the resources available in the standing reserve, while humans posture themselves as ‘lord[s] of the earth’ (BW 332).

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One can see this danger in Heidegger’s example of how ‘modern technology’ has made agriculture into the ‘mechanized food industry,’ whose ultimate concern and practical imperative is to procure ‘the maximum yield and the minimum expense’ (ibid., 320–1). Such industrial institutions violate billions of non-human animals yearly by ignoring these animals’ subjectivity and the ethical demands it generates, and they debase humans by shutting out other ways that we might appreciate non-human animals – artistically, poetically, and so on. Heidegger’s work is valuable for pointing towards these other possibilities. Among modes of this unfolding process, Heidegger distinguishes the human capacity to let beings show themselves authentically – to let them be – from the human tendency to recognize only what practical use we might make of the world, forcing being into inappropriate conceptual and existential forms. Encouragingly, Heidegger’s later writings also describe different modes of thought, which he contrasts with mere ‘calculative thinking’ (rechnenden Denken). Among these are ‘commemorative thinking’ (andenken Denken) and ‘meditative thinking’ (besinnlichen Denken). These modes of thought are markedly reticent and reluctant to proclaim final and decisive ontological definitions or value assessments, and they involve pausing to reflect or meditate upon being before making presumptive reckonings or calculations, free of the ‘illusion … that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct’ (ibid., 332). Such an approach inspires one to become as informed as possible about the objects of one’s thought, and this requires the willingness to consider that previous answers to fundamental existential and ethical questions might have been too hasty, as well as the capacity to listen (as Heidegger puts it) to the call of being. These meditative modes of thought have deep ethical implications because they demand that we recognize our role as ‘shepherd’ of being (ibid., 245). Heidegger valorizes modes of thinking that ‘heed protectively, for example, by letting a herd graze at pasture’ (ibid., 369). Given that he himself lumps inanimate entities with non-human animals under the ‘nature’ umbrella, one might expect him to have chosen other symbols to represent the proper mode of relation to being – for example, being’s ‘gardener,’ who does not create beings or their being, but who fosters their development by maintaining a clearing in which they can blossom or unfold. But repeatedly, Heidegger characterizes humanity as ‘shepherd,’ a word with non-human animal connotations, and this perhaps indicates something of both the asymmetrical nature of the

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ethical relationship and the necessarily personal or subjective character of beings who deserve a special brand of ethical consideration. The shepherd’s primary role is to serve as being’s ‘guardian,’ a characterization that Heidegger employs in the ‘Letter on Humanism,’ in which he describes ‘ek-sistence’ itself as ‘guardianship, that is, the care for Being’ (ibid., 246). Interestingly, while in an earlier text he had spent more than one hundred pages describing the fundamental poverty of non-human animals’ worldly experience, in the ‘Letter on Humanism’ he describes ‘the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being into the preservation of Being’s truth’ (ibid., 245). Elsewhere he describes human Dasein as ‘the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth’ (ibid., 338). Such is the general responsibility that Heidegger wants Dasein to recognize. When considering the possibility of applying Heidegger’s thought to specific questions of environmental ethics, one might find inspiration in Heidegger’s description of human ‘dwelling’ in the world: ‘Mortals dwell in that they save the earth … To save properly means to set something free into its own essence. To save the earth is more than to exploit or wear it out’ (ibid., 352). Furthermore, connections to thinking about non-human animals’ ontological and ethical status are easily drawn. Certainly one might extend Heidegger’s analysis in ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ of how agriculture has become ‘the mechanized food industry’ to thinking about factory farms, which frame individual non-human animals as units of potential value from which businesses seek maximum yield at minimum expense, granting these animals only that meagre care and maintenance that promotes this economic imperative (ibid., 320). Purported justifications for these institutions are based on facile determinations of non-human animal experience either as non-rational and therefore ethically insignificant or as not sentient enough to demand better treatment than what is doled out by the billions of units by factory farming. But Heidegger writes: ‘If man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless’ (ibid., 223). In the context of my argument, this requires us to encounter the non-human animal in a pre-cognitive openness to the demand of a needful Other. And we must do so before labelling the animal at all, either by designating her ‘merely animal’ or by stamping her processed carcass with a price tag. Properly embodying our role as shepherd requires us to embrace the kind of reticence that Heidegger describes, while listening for the ethical call that issues from the other

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animal. Such an approach does not begin with prefabricated and final determinations of non-human animal existence; rather, it returns to an original but neglected sense of mystery when faced with the other animal, which, like a human, has subjective experience, albeit of a radically different and perhaps at least partly unknowable kind. If we encounter non-human animals in this way, we will hesitate before issuing proclamations about their being or calculations of their value, and this will allow us to recognize the face of the other animal as the source of a fundamental ethical demand. This in turn will require us to stop forcing non-human animals to render themselves up for our consumption, thereby condemning them to miserable lives in hellish meat factories. We might better embody our role as shepherd by creating or maintaining refuge areas for wildlife and other animals to live out a more appropriate, natural existence – letting these animals be more authentically. But this does not imply that a generally protective but laissez-faire approach to other animals is always sufficient. Since the non-human and human animal worlds have always been and will continue to be entwined, we must find well-grounded approaches to non-human animals’ ethical status, and this must include examining myriad possibilities for reforming the ways in which we currently live with them. Heidegger maintains that ‘openness to mystery’ (Offenheit für das Geheimnis) promotes ‘the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way’ and promises ‘a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it’ (DT 55). Given the dangers of technology, this statement indicates hope that humans may one day respect the mystery that non-human animals embody; this in turn will open paths towards radical new possibilities for being with them in ways that do not entail the debasement of humanity as thoughtlessly inhumane. Heidegger helps lead this way by recognizing that non-human animal being is an important and by no means settled question, by offering fresh analyses of their experience, and by elucidating ways of thinking that, suitably applied, can help us reassess the ethics of human relationships with them. In his writings, Heidegger speaks long and eloquently to various specific and concrete forms of human being-in-the-world; even so, when non-human animals are concerned, he mostly provides more abstract and unitary descriptions, without discussing distinctions among types of animal being, much less their ethical significance. The following comment, which portrays the non-human animal world as strangely static, is typical: ‘Throughout the course of its life the animal is confined

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to its environing world, immured as it were within a fixed sphere that is incapable of further expansion or contraction’ (FC 198). This abstract picture of animal being as static may accurately reflect something about non-human animality in general, but when one considers social relationships between specific individual human and non-human animals, various ethically charged responses are possible. Undermining the Heideggerian characterization of non-human animality as fixed and unchangeable, and in light of a Heideggerian view of the human role as shepherd of being, humans might more clearly survey the widespread and dramatic impact that human action has had on the character of nonhuman animals’ experience. The products of human reason largely determine the content of any world that non-human animal beings have, in that humans create or maintain environments that support radically different forms of non-human animal being-in-the-world, from the rich existence of an elephant in a protected natural habitat, to the tortured and barren life of a veal calf. The environments that humans allow other animals to occupy influence the range of experiences they are able to have, and to that extent humans affect the expansions and contractions of non-human animals’ being that Heidegger characterizes as structurally impossible. For example, researchers have had some success teaching apes to employ American Sign Language. Without debating the validity of their findings, the strength or complexity of the apes’ grasp of language, and so on, it seems that humans have some power to facilitate the expansion of apes’ worlds by teaching them to comprehend and employ such means of signification – even if non-human animals’ abilities here are certainly far more basic than those of most humans. At the other extreme, along with these powers to expand non-human animals’ experience, humans obviously have great powers to contract or restrict the range of that experience – for clear example, factory farms deprive billions of non-human animals of light, movement, and social relationships with other members of their species. One might recognize smaller differences of this type as well – for example, by distinguishing different contexts in which animals are used to entertain and edify human beings, from zoos where animals are nearly always caged to environments designed to more closely resemble the animals’ natural habitat. Humans have always employed their cognitive powers in strategies of oppression and violence against other animal species. Some might seek to jettison rationality completely, but I would argue for a strategy that employs our cognitive powers to realize that humanity’s rational

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and calculative abilities do not represent the ne plus ultra of creation, but comprise but one mode among others in the human existential repertoire – and a particularly dangerous mode at that, because of its tendency to shut out other forms. It is not a matter of renouncing rationality or technology but of not allowing these modes of bringing-forththat-which-is to obliterate other modes of being, human and animal. Similarly, it is not a matter of escaping or relinquishing our role as shepherd, but of embodying it with humane respect for other animals over whom we have power – of acknowledging the importance of ontological differences between humans and other animals and recognizing the responsibility that this difference entails for those of us who can relate to things as such. Here we must recognize the non-human animal face as a source of ethical obligation. Inspired by Heidegger, we might conceive ourselves not as lords but as guardians of non-human animals, called on both to preserve animals’ mystery and to allow natural and authentic modes of their being to flourish, without forcing into presence torturous and distorted forms that promote only crass economic interests, such as those that exist on veal farms and in laboratories for the development of new cosmetics.

NOTES 1 I would like to thank the editors of this volume for valuable suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 For examples of Kant’s position, see Lectures on Ethics, trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 212–13; and The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 193. For relevant remarks from Bentham, see An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: Athlone, 1970), 282–3. 3 Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Jan Narveson, ‘Animal Rights,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1980): 463–71. 4 ‘Wilhelm Diltheys Forschungsarbeit und der Kampf um eine historische Weltanschauung,’ ed. Frithjof Rodi, Archiv der Dilthey-Forschungsstelle (1993): 15–16, quoted in John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 359. 5 History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 223–4, quoted in John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 359.

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6 Translation mine. 7 Quoted in David Ferrell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 22–3. 8 The seeds for this mode of thinking can be found as early as Being and Time; see, for example, his discussion of humanity as ‘the entity that talks’ (208). 9 For a helpful discussion of this shift, see the entry on ‘life and biology’ in Michael Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary (Malden: Blackwell, 1999). Inwood speculates that Heidegger’s move away from using ‘life’ to describe humanity reflects a decrease in the influence of Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie on Heidegger’s thought and a belief on Heidegger’s part that the term is a ‘fuzzy concept … in constant danger of reduction to merely biological life’ (119). 10 This difference shows up in Being and Time as the ‘ontic priority’ of (human) Dasein – the only creature with the capacity to comprehend the ‘ontological difference’ between beings and being and the only being whose being is an issue for it. 11 All italics are in the original document. 12 Heidegger makes this explicit when he writes: ‘The animal as such does not stand within a manifestness of beings. Neither its so-called environment nor the animal itself are manifest as beings. The animal in principle does not possess the possibility of attending either to the being that it itself is or to beings other than itself, because … of its captivation’ (FC 248). 13 John Caputo, Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 250; idem, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 266. 14 Silvia Benso, The Face of Things: A Different Side of Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), 67, 110. 15 Robert Bernasconi, ‘“The Double Concept of Philosophy” and the Place of Ethics in Being and Time,’ Research in Phenomenology 18 (1988): 41–58. 16 Benso, The Face of Things, 56. 17 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Carus, 1999), 43. 18 Later discussions do mention animals with more developed brains, such as the generic ‘ape’ in the ‘Letter on Humanism,’ but, as in the earlier discussion, Heidegger frames discussion of non-human animals in opposition to human beings. 19 MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals, 45. 20 Ibid., 46. 21 Ibid., 47.

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Donald Turner Ibid., 49. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 47. For examples of Kant’s view, see Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 536, 544; Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Patton (New York: Harper, 1956), 114; and The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 13.

PART THREE Po•sis and Dwelling

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9 The Path of a Thinking, Poeticizing Building: The Strange Uncanniness of Human Being on Earth steven davis

The unique and uncanny strangeness of human being has been at the heart of Western modes of thought since their inception with the Greeks. There have been times when it has been highly pronounced: in Plato and Nietzsche, to mention only two possible figures in the history of philosophy. And there have been times when this strangeness has not been so directly addressed (in different ways): in Aristotle and Hume, again to mention only two out of a possible many. How this strangeness has been discussed is manifold; how it has been perceived and named has assumed many forms. We have been seen as political, mortal, created, ensouled, spirit, consciousness, self-consciousness, desire, reason, and those who exercise language, to name but a few of the ways we have understood ourselves. However, if one were to attempt to define concisely this unique strangeness, it would be fair perhaps to centre it on what we have called, since the time of Aristotle, our rationality – that is, that we are the beings who possess reason or, better and more precisely stated, logos. It is this that distinguishes us from other beings on this earth, and it is this on which we most pride ourselves. Even today we still do so, not only in general but most especially in the form that reason takes in the natural sciences and in technology. And of the latter two paragon forms of reason in the twentieth century, in the widest and deepest cultural sense, it is our technology that is valued most. And so might it rightly be, for technology is the application of reason to production – that is, the application of logos (that which distinguishes us) to techne. Of course, such a definition is only a starting point, but it suffices at the moment in order to be able to ask about the aim or end of technology. The latter can be defined in several ways – for example, as the provision

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of creature comforts, as the best way of managing our resources (both natural and human), as the most efficient means of production, or even as the procurement of knowledge (both pure and applied, the latter being used to develop technology even further). But perhaps, again to be concise, all of these aims – and others that might be mentioned – could be summarized by saying that they have as their ultimate goal the securing of human dominion over all that is upon this earth and now even that which is beyond it in space. In other words, the end sought by technology and thereby our reason, that which constitutes our strangeness, is the rule and power over all that is earthly and nonearthly – including ourselves. The strangeness of human being is also an issue that in one form or another occupied Heidegger throughout the path of his thinking. As early as Being and Time, this strangeness had come to the fore in his discussion of our way of being.1 There this strangeness is called die Unheimlichkeit, which literally means ‘not-at-homeness,’ and it is seen as belonging essentially to human being as a constitutive part of its being. Later, in Introduction to Metaphysics, this same strangeness is addressed by Heidegger from another standpoint, namely, that of the socalled ‘Ode on Human Being’ in Sophocles’ Antigone.2 In yet another text, Underway Towards Language, Heidegger takes up the strangeness of human being on earth in an essay on the poetry of Georg Trakl entitled ‘Language in the Poem.’3 In what follows, I consider our strangeness from the point of view of the first of the latter two texts, because of the light it may throw on our strangeness, both its possibilities (capacities or powers) and what might be called the danger with which it is confronted – two issues that cannot be separated. There will also be occasion to refer to yet another poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Heidegger discusses in Holzwege.4 We will conclude with a reference to the American poet Robinson Jeffers, not because he provides a last answer to the issues raised in this essay, but because his was a voice consonant with those mentioned above and perhaps also one that may be more directly accessible to American ears.5 In Heidegger’s discussion of the ‘Ode on Human Being’ (lines 332– 75), his treatment of it takes place in the context of his consideration of what it means to be human.6 To be more precise, his analysis is in service to an understanding of how Parmenides determines human being. Given the difficulty of understanding Parmenides the thinker, Heidegger offers the reading of the ode by Sophocles the poet as a preparatory approach to a way of understanding ‘the poetic project of hu-

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man-being [Menschsein] among the Greeks,’ including Parmenides.7 For our purposes here, we will limit ourselves to coming to grips with Heidegger’s reading of the ode, because it is sufficient to supply us with the problematic character of human being. Sophocles’ ‘Ode on Human Being’ runs as follows:8 There are many uncanny things, but nothing that surpasses human being [anthropos = Mensch] in uncanniness. It sets sail on the frothing waters amid the south winds of winter tacking through the mountains and furious chasms of the waves. It wearies even the noblest of the gods, the Earth, indestructible and untiring, overturning her from year to year driving the plows this way and that with horses. And man [aner = Mann], pondering and plotting, snares the light-gliding birds and hunts the beasts of the wilderness and the native creatures of the sea. With cunning he overpowers the beast that roams the mountains by night as by day, and the undaunted bull. And he has found his way to the resonance of the word, and to wind-swift all-understanding, and to the courage of rule over cities. He has considered also how to flee from exposure to the arrows of unpropitious weather and frost. Everywhere journeying; without way comes such a one to nothing that is to be; from Hades alone shall such a one not devise a flight, even if he has succeeded in cleverly evading painful sickness.

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Clever indeed, mastering the ways of skill beyond all hope, he accomplishes evil, sometimes achieves brave deeds. He wends his way between the laws of the earth and the adjured justice of the gods. Rising high above place, deprived of place is the one, for whom, always being the non-being for the sake of the venture. May such a one never frequent my hearth; may my mind never share the presumption of one who does this.

Heidegger’s reading orients itself with regard to the first two lines: ‘There are many uncanny things, but nothing that surpasses human being in uncanniness.’ That reading takes place in three stages: first, the intrinsic meaning of the poem is sought; second, the limits or borders of the entire realm that is opened up by the poem are sketched; and, third, an attempt is made to stand at the centre of the poem and the realm opened up by it and take the measure of what human being would be according to the poetic saying.9 We will follow Heidegger’s discussion in the three stages and then conclude with a statement of where we stand – both at the end of the poem and at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. In addition to the first two lines of the poem, Heidegger singles out two other places – lines 360–1 and 370–1 – that are decisive for his interpretation of what surges through and above the poem and thereby supports it as its innermost significance. However, since they are subordinate to the first two lines, even though they remain essential for unfolding the meaning of those lines, we shall deal with them after a brief sketch of why we are the uncanniest of all beings. Heidegger’s discussion centres on what the word uncanny means. The Greek word is deinon, and Heidegger’s translation is das Unheimliche.10 The significance of this is brought to the fore when Heidegger writes that ‘the saying, “human being is the uncanniest,” gives the authentic Greek definition of human being.’11 The import of this being the Greek determination of what it means to be human is that this definition, given the fact that we are still Greek to our core even in the late twentieth century, means that we are still gripped and steered by this view of human being.

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But, then, what does it mean to be uncanny? We are taking the uncanny as that which casts us out of being at home [das Unheimliche], i.e., belonging to a home, a place in which there is dwelling, what is familiar, what is unendangered. Not belonging to a home does not allow us to be at home in a land. Therein lies what is overpowering [das Über-wältigende]. However, human being is the uncanniest not only because it passes its life [sein Wesen verbringt] in the middle of the thus understood uncanniest, but rather because it steps out of, backs away from, its nearest and most dwelled in home-like limits, for it, as the one who exercises power [der Gewalt-tätige], crosses over the limits of one who belongs to a home, and indeed precisely in the direction of the uncanny in the sense of the overpowering.12

The uncanny means to not be at home and to be the exerciser of power, even in some way violent in the exercise of that power. A strange, if not uncanny, definition itself of human being. But then again, if we think on our lives today, perhaps not, for there has perhaps never been a greater or more global sense of utter rootlessness – we are at the same time everywhere at home and nowhere at home. But three issues must be clarified before we go on to Heidegger’s second and third citations in stage one of his interpretation of the poem: not-at-homeness, the exercise of power in a violent way, and the overpowering. Since the first depends for its sense on the other two, we shall consider them first. Heidegger says of the deinon, in its overpowering character: ‘The deinon is the terrible in the sense of the overpowering power [überwaltigendes Walten] which compels panic fear, true fear just as collected, soaring, silent awe does. The might, the overpowering is the essential character of power [Walten] itself.’13 He then says of deinon, as the exercise of power, that it ‘means the powerful [Gewaltige] in the sense of one who uses power [Gewalt] but is violent [gewalttatig] insofar as the use of power is not only the fundamental feature of his action but rather of his being-there [Dasein].’14 Heidegger than adds: Beings as a whole are as power [Walten] the overpowering, deinon, in the first sense. Human being is deinon, first, insofar as it remains set out into this overpowering, because it essentially belongs to being [Sein]. But human being is at the same time deinon, because it is the one that oversteps bounds in the [above] characterized sense. (It gathers the ruling power [das Waltende] and lets it into manifestness.) Human being is the one

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that oversteps bounds, not aside from and along with other attributes, but solely in the sense that in its overstepping of bounds it uses power against the overpowering. Because deinon is twofold in an originarily united sense, it is to deinoton, the most powerful: violent in the midst of the overpowering.15

All of the above shows why the not-at-homeness of deinon, of die Unheimlichkeit, in the superlative is the fundamental characteristic of human being. It is such because as the one that oversteps bounds and is thereby violent in the face of the overpowering, it oversteps all limits of the home-like – it literally surpasses them and thereby enters the realm of the strange, the uncanny. But in this first stage it still remains to be seen how this takes place. Heidegger’s last two chosen citations illustrate this. Line 360 from Antigone says: pantoporos aporos en’ ouden erchetai. Heidegger translates: ‘Everywhere journeying; without way comes such a one to nothing.’16 Poros is the crucial element here, for it means most concisely ‘path’ or ‘way’; hence, human being makes paths everywhere, ventures everything, yet arrives nowhere. It is cast out of all paths; that is to say, it becomes radically homeless, uncanny, through its relation to beings as a whole. But this can be taken one step further. Line 370 of Antigone says: hupsipolis apolis. Heidegger relates and contrasts this with pantoporos a poros by stating that the latter points to that to which human being stretches out, namely, the various realms of beings, whereas the former points to the ground and place of human beings being-there (das Dasein des Menschens), that place where all paths would meet, namely, the polis as ‘the place, the there [Da], wherein and as which being-there [Da-sein] as something historical is.’17 This is where all action and creation take place: ‘To this place of history belong the gods, the temples, the priests, the festivals, the games, the poets, the thinkers, the rulers, the council of elders, the assembly of the people, the army and the ships.’18 All of the latter constitute the polis, which is not just a relation of rulers and ruled.19 What is salient here, as Heidegger interprets it, is that those who become pre-eminent in the above – that is, those who rise high in the city, are those who become without a city, for they are the ones as creators who are responsible for founding the city. But thereby, of course, they become unheimlich, uncanny, not-at-home. Hence the outline of the poem’s meaning, that which sustains it and rises above it, is complete. The essence of the uncanniest one, the hu-

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man being who is not at home because of its violent, pantoporos-aporos, hupsipolis-apolis, character, has been shown in its realms, scope of power, and destiny. Now for the second stage: the limits or boundaries of the entire realm opened up by the poem or, in other words, ‘the unfolding of the being of human being as the uncanniest one.’20 It might bear repeating at this point that what we find in the poem and in Heidegger’s reading of it ‘is not concerned with a description and exposition of the realms and behavior of human being, which is also to be found among other beings, but rather a poetic projection of its being in its most extreme possibilities and limits.’21 In other words, the issue is the essence of human being, something that cannot be put aside at will but rather accompanies us either as actuality or as possibility in all that we do. And as to whether the projection is something that belongs to a past age of human being, one that has been overcome or left behind with some sort of progress, one would have to answer as Heidegger does: ‘The beginning is the uncanniest, mightiest, and most sovereign.’22 Here the ruling sense of Gewalt and gewaltig comes to the fore. The beginning rules what succeeds it precisely because it was there at the beginning as the origin that rules all that flows from it. And in the present context that means: ‘The uncanniest is what it is because it harbors such a beginning in which everything all at once broke out of a superabundance into the overpowering and that which is to be mastered.’23 What this might mean for us today will be taken up in this chapter’s concluding remarks. To return to the second phase of Heidegger’s reading of the poem: what is to be shown is how the being of human being unfolds to become the uncanniest way of being, and this will be done by showing how the reciprocal emergence and need of the two senses of deinon literally give us the essential form of the uncanniest one. The picture of the sea and the earth that Heidegger sketches is not much unlike that of many environmentalists today, even though he contrasts it with that which he ascribes to us moderns. This is most probably due to a shift in the ‘consciousness’ of many moderns today in the face of environmental crises and concerns and an awareness of the need for some wilderness to counterbalance our civilization. There are problems, however, with the facile way in which the latter is stated by environmentalists and ecologists, as we shall see shortly. But it is still worth drawing the comparison, for Heidegger’s analysis of the poem will show precisely that; in other words, the comparison is fruitful because it reveals the superficiality or inadequacy of much that is

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said today about our dealings with the environment – that is, with the earth in a global sense. May it suffice to say here that the sea, the earth, and the living animals in and on them seem to be simply there in their order and effortless existence until the violent one, the uncanniest one, breaks in upon the scene in its attempts at agriculture, domestication, hunting, adventure, and mastery of all things including sickness and natural discomforts. But Heidegger immediately counters this picture with the statement that what we would call the natural world today, the earth, is not to be so radically separated from what we are as human. Those things we would call human and that we allow to overstep the bounds of the natural world – namely, language, understanding, and building – belong no less than the earth, the sea, and animals to the overpowering. The difference is that the latter as natural are something that ‘reigns around [human being] and sustains it … whereas the former reigns through it as such,’ and it must explicitly take that over – that is, make it its own.24 One can, of course, immediately see here the traditional dichotomy of the natural and human worlds – but it is precisely this simple differentiation that Heidegger wishes to undermine. And he does so in two ways. First, he says that we did not invent language, understanding, building, and poetry – a popular traditional view, and also a sign of our uncanniness: we do not even understand ourselves; rather, we found our way to them and thereby to overpowering and our role as the exercisers of power (die Gewalt des Tätigen).25 (Another way to put this is in the form of a rhetorical question: How could we give ourselves the above gifts when that giving would have to presuppose that we already possessed those gifts?) The second way in which Heidegger undermines the dichotomy is by stating that it is only through language, understanding, and building such as is manifested in our dealings with the earth, the sea, and animals that the latter are as such: The violence of poetic saying, of thinking projection, of building and configuration, of the action that creates states is not a putting into play of capacities that human being has, but rather a checking and ordering of powers by virtue of which a being discloses itself as such insofar as human being engages in this. This disclosure of the being is that power that human being has to master in order first of all in [the overstepping of bound constitutive of] violence to itself, i.e., historical, in the midst of beings.26

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In other words, there is a reciprocal need between beings and human being. Beings disclose themselves only insofar as we have dealings with them, and we are as historical – our way of being – only insofar as we allow beings to disclose themselves. Thus the traditional dichotomy between all other beings and human beings, the so-called natural and human worlds, is seriously disrupted. (We will return to the issue of poetic and thinking violence below, for it is, given Heidegger’s and others’ attempts to overcome our drive for mastery of the earth, an issue that must be addressed.) But there are two things that can stop this venturing forth, this overstepping of bounds that belongs to human being: taking well-worn paths, and death. We will deal with the former below in another context; at this point death is of most interest. It is, as the poem says, the one thing that humans cannot avoid, out of which they cannot find a way; it is the limit beyond all limits. However, death is not to be viewed as a point in time when life ceases, but rather as something in the face of which and with which we always are; that is to say, ‘insofar as a human being is, it stands in the state of having no way out of death.’27 Human being always carries death, so to speak, within itself, and thereby there is no escape from it, not even in the midst of life. Hence, since death is that which would radically deprive us of being at home, since it would deprive us of our being in general, it is uncanny. Thus, in its incorporation of death into its very way of being, ‘being-there is the occurrence of uncanniness itself.’28 Thereby the limit not only of this powerful and uncanny being is established, but also that of the poetic projection of the being and essence of human being.29 The final words of the poem are an elaboration of what has already been said – but the terms introduced are decisive for Western thought, even down to the present, for techne and dike are introduced as if they were diametrically opposite, as opposite as the violent and the overpowering would be. The word techne occurs in conjunction with the word mechanoen, which means ‘machination’ in the sense of skilled invention. (A verb form based on the same root occurs earlier, at line 349, which Heidegger translates as List and we as ‘cunning.’) Heidegger is quite justified in understanding the phase mechanoen technas as ‘the ways of skill,’ since this is how the Greeks would have heard these words.30 Techne is defined more precisely by Heidegger as a ‘knowing’ or ‘knowledge.’ In his translation of the poem, he uses the German das Können; but in his later discussion of it das Wissen is employed. There is nothing unto-

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ward here, however, for the meanings of both words are necessary if we are to understand what Heidegger says here. Das Können means quite simply ‘to be able’ to do, use, create, or produce something. Das Wissen means simply ‘to know,’ which is a prerequisite for being able to do something. Hence, we obtain Heidegger’s definition of techne as ‘the originary and constant looking out beyond what is given at any time.’31 It is this that allows us to put the being of any particular being into a work – that is, something made or created in the usual sense of the word. As this knowledge, techne can also be understood as art, for it, in a work, brings about the being of a being by setting it into a work, ‘wherein reigning emergence, phusis, comes to shine as what appears.’32 What is most important is that this knowing is an opening up and keeping open that is reflective and that brings about the being of a being by setting it into a work; thus techne defines deinon, the violent, in its decisive fundamental feature; ‘for violence [as the overstepping of bounds] is the use of power against the overpowering: the knowing wrestling of the concealed being [Sein] before it into that which appears as a being.’33 Over against techne there is dike or justice as the overpowering, which is not to be understood in a juridical or moral sense but rather as a relating or binding in the sense of joining together in an arrangement, structure, or order wherein the overpowering as dike reigns and disposes in such a way as to compel adaptation and compliance of beings to one another and to the articulated whole or ensemble.34 In this way, dike is to be understood as the governing order that is original gatheredtogetherness – that is, logos, which as power (Walen) is phusis or being.35 Hence, dike and techne (both as deinon) stand over against each other, but each is only in this standing over against the other; in other words, they are only insofar as the uncanniest one is.36 This knowing one, this uncanniest one, is what it is in the interrelation of the overpowering and the violent. It finds itself between order and disorder, the beautiful and the ugly. It ventures all things, and even when it succeeds, it stands to lose itself, for it can then take well-worn paths that it has created and thereby back away from its essence as the uncanniest one that must forge new paths. And if it succeeds in another sense – namely, as the one that oversteps bounds in challenging the overpowering – then it must also lose itself because the overpowering remains the overpowering. In both cases, in its venturing it loses its athomeness and is thereby the uncanniest, the one least at home, the one that is most at home when it is least home – uncanny indeed.

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And so must it be with the creative one, the one who oversteps bounds, when he or she approaches the un-said and the un-thought in what is spoken and thought – as now in the third phrase of Heidegger’s reading of the poem. The first phase showed us the uncanniest one as the centre of the poem, and the second phase how this was expressed through the overpowering and the violent. What can the third phase show? The necessity of the uncanniness in the setting over against each other of the overpowering and the one that oversteps bounds, a necessity that derives from the essence of being human. This necessity consists in the fact that the overpowering as being needs human being as the place in which it may appear. As that place, as that being-there, human being is the breach (Bresche) into which being breaks. In German, eine Bresche zu schlagen means the same as ‘making a clearing in the forest,’ and it is precisely this that human being helps bring about through what it is and does. It is the breach, the clearing, wherein being appears. The Greeks (and we since their time) responded with works in which history comes to pass, wherein beings are let be in their being. But, as those who wilfully overstepped bounds, they had to shatter against the overpowering – yet still they were needed by that overpowering. According to Heidegger, this was not arrogance or presumption on the part of the Greeks but simply a necessary response to being as the overpowering. The question is whether any other response is possible. Must we continue to respond as the Greeks did? Is it possible to remain the breach for being without being violent? Without shattering on being as the overpowering? Technology is surely not the answer, for it is the most extreme such that it no longer is a mere extension of techne but something radically different in the way it opens up the being of beings. Technology would have the earth as a stockpile of resources at its disposal, would rule over everything, and thereby would no longer shatter against the overpowering, which it itself would become. And the attitude behind technology is the same as that behind many ecologists and environmentalists, for they would manage the environment – that is, hold sway over it just as the technocrat would. They would simply perpetuate the classical picture of the human and natural worlds, wherein we would remain somehow divorced from the natural world as the earthly and thereby be able to manage it. Here we find the true presumption and arrogance that we are not actually of this earth, for only that assumption, hidden or otherwise, could legitimate the idea that we are in a position to be managers of the earth – or, to put it more bluntly, its rulers.

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But what alternative is there? Heidegger spoke again and again of a new beginning and sought to prepare the way for it. It is the case that much of that attempt was made after the discussion of the ode in Introduction to Metaphysics, perhaps thus rendering that discussion merely a way station that would be left behind. But the fact that Heidegger continued to characterize his thinking as preparatory ought to give us pause if we are tempted to think that such a beginning is at hand. What possibilities do we have in the face of our Greek origin, one wherein even poetry and thought may be spoken of as violent? How can they be – if indeed they can be – rendered non-violent and still retain the power necessary in order to respond to the overpowering as being and thereby preserve our way of being as the there of being? Certainly there are hints of how this might come about in some of Heidegger’s later texts, but that is what they remain – hints. What we must keep in mind is that even in our most familiar and seemingly canny dealings with the earth there is something uncanny – about those dealings, about us – so much so that even the thought about the path of a thinking, poeticizing building becomes in a worthy sense questionable.37 If such a path is possible, if the machination that ‘arises from the being of technology’ is given its due place but is also put in its place, then this may well be because the earth is seen not as resource but as possibility and is thereby preserved in its overpowering character.38 Perhaps in conjunction with this or perhaps occasioning it, the earth will rise up invisible in us, as Rilke wrote and lived: Earth is it not this that you will: invisible to rise up in us? – Is it not your dream, one time to be invisible? Earth! Invisible!! What, if not transformation, is your urgent mission? Earth, you lovely one, I will.39

Perhaps then also Trakl’s line, ‘Something strange is the soul on earth,’ will no longer be true.40 Perhaps – and perhaps not, for we may, even as mortals, always remain uncanny, somehow not at home, both here on earth and in ourselves. The efforts of Western thought to come to grips with our uncanny strangeness are testimony to the difficulty of the task of becoming at home in this world and on the earth for human being, and it might be wise to remember that the issue of our uncanniness remains an open question, one without an assured answer – if indeed there even is one.

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But then perhaps at least, finally, we can keep in view also the words of the poet Robinson Jeffers, words written down in the same decade as those of Introduction to Metaphysics: ... man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history ... for contemplation or in fact ... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatbeauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man Apart from that ...41

Perhaps it may help to recall this at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a period that might with justice be called the uncanniest in the history of the most uncanny one upon this earth.

NOTES 1 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1953), 170, 188–90, 192, 252, 276–8, 280, 286–9, 295–6, 342–4 (hereafter cited as SZ); trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson as Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962). 2 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, ed. Petra Jaeger, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 40 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), 155–73 (hereafter cited as EM); trans. Ralph Manheim as An Introduction to Metaphysics (Garden City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1961), 123–38 (hereafter cited as IM). The English translation has been consulted and sometimes used, but because of its unreliability, most of the translations contained in the present paper are new and directly from the German text. 3 Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 12 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), 31–78 (hereafter cited as US); trans. Peter Hertz as On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 157–98 (hereafter cited as WL). Cf. also Georg Trakl, Dichtungen und Briefe, ed. Walther Killy and Hans Szklenar, Vol. 1 (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1969), 141–2; and Poems, trans. Lucia Getsi (Athens: Mundus Atrium, 1973), 140–3. 4 Heidegger, Holzwege, ed. F.-W. von Hermann, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 269–320 (hereafter cited as H); trans. Albert Hofstadter as Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper

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7 8

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Steven Davis and Row, 1971), 89–142 (hereafter cited as PLT). Cf. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duineser Elegien und Die Sonette an Orpheus (Baden-Baden: Insel Verlag, 1982), 40; and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1982), 200–3. Robinson Jeffers, ed., The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (New York: Random House, 1959), 594. Concerning the appropriateness of Heidegger’s selection of this text, one could cite Andrew Brown, ed. and trans., Sophocles: Antigone, Greek and English with Notes (Wiltshire: Aris and Phillips, 1987), 153f.: ‘This ode is perhaps the most famous choral song in the Greek language and certainly one of the most remarkable,’ and ‘the ode is an important document in the history of ideas.’ Or one could cite Joan V. O’Brien’s very interesting and provocative Guide to Sophocles’ Antigone (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 47: ‘This ode is a many-faceted gem that will continue to receive fresh interpretation as it has from the time of the Byzantine scholiasts up to Heidegger and MacLeish.’ Our discussion of Heidegger’s reading of the ode does not imply that it is the only one possible; indeed, Heidegger himself would be the last to claim such. But the fact that it is not the only one does not lessen its force or significance, for it is, in Heidegger’s terms, a thoughtful encounter with a poem. EM 155; IM 123. The problem of translation should be mentioned at this point. As is well known, Heidegger’s translations from the Greek do not necessarily conform to or correspond with what might be called more traditional forms of translation. I will follow his translations but will also compare them with the Greek; and when necessary, they may be altered slightly to clarify a point he makes. It should also be noted that Heidegger divides the poem a bit differently than it appears in the Greek, but this does not affect the ‘validity’ of his reading. Finally, the difficulty in translating gender-specific pronouns should also be mentioned. Because Greek and German both use gender-related words, as we do not necessarily have to in English, and because of the content of the poem (cf. n11 below), it is not always possible to remain gender neutral in the translation of some terms, especially personal pronouns. However, insofar as this is possible, it has been attempted here; seen though the structure of the poem and Sophocles’ choice of words, this has included omitting some personal pronouns. In the Gesamtausgabe version of Einführung in die Metaphysik, there are subdivision titles for the three stages that do not appear in the original edition of 1953. Since, according to the editor, they were indicated by Heidegger

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10

11

12

13 14 15

himself, and since they are helpful even though they do not correspond word for word with the stages laid out in the original edition and retained in the Gesamtausgabe version, they will be used. Cf. SZ for a complementary discussion of human being as uncanny; the relevant passages are listed in n1 above. There is no single good translation of das Unheimliche, especially not without an explanation; hence just as Heidegger does in German in translating the Greek deinon (i.e., he uses several terms), so shall we, since both das Unheimliche and deinon require it. EM 160; IM 127. Human being is a translation of der Mensch, a term representing the entire human race. Sometimes Heidegger uses das Menschsein, which is translated here as human-being. It should also be pointed out that in the poem both anthropos and aner are used. O’Brien, Guide to Antigone, 7, has an interesting and persuasive hypothesis as to why they both appear – one not incompatible with the reading given by Heidegger – namely, that Antigone is ‘androgynous.’ The play, then, is to ‘overcome’ the emphasis on the masculine and matters associated with it that were present in Greek culture. Regardless of whether such is the case, it is clear that the poem is fundamentally about human being as a whole. EM 160; IM 127. The words Gewalt (power), Überwältigen (overpower), Walten (power, rule, or reign), gewaltig (powerful), and gewalttätig (violent) all carry the significance of power and its exercise, and in two senses: first, simply raw force and, second, a power that is justified (by something beyond itself) to be powerful (i.e., to rule, reign, or otherwise determine something or someone). The original and core meaning is definitely the former, but the latter still accompanies the former in German and also in Heidegger’s use of the related terms in his reading of the poem. Only one cautionary note is in order: gewalttätig die Gewalttätigkeit, der Gewaltige, respectively ‘violent,’ and ‘violence,’ ‘the violent one,’ may seem too harsh, but milder translations centred on the root meaning of ‘the exercise of power’ do not always carry enough force, and in addition our English word ‘violence’ has its root in the Latin vis, which means ‘force’ or ‘power’ in much the same way as the German Gewalt does. However, in attempting to remain true to the Heideggerian text, we will also translate die Gewalttätigkeit (and related terms) with variations on ‘the will to overstep bounds.’ It is up to the reader to see how these translations fit the Heideggerian text. EM 158f; IM 126. (Note that Heidegger’s definitions of deinon are consonant with the traditional definitions of it.) EM 159; IM 126. Ibid.

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16 EM 161; IM 127. The usual translation is ‘all-resourceful; resourceless he comes upon nothing.’ 17 EM 161; IM 128. 18 Ibid. 19 A case can be made that this is also Aristotle’s view, but a discussion of that would go beyond the confines of the present paper. 20 EM 162. 21 Ibid., 164; IM 130. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 EM 165; IM 131. ‘Reigns around’ translates umwalten, and ‘reigns through’ translates durchwalten, both of which are not common terms in German – especially the former, which brings to mind the term Umwelt (environment) in SZ. 25 EM 165–6; IM 131f. 26 EM 166; IM 132. 27 EM 167; IM 133; also cf. SZ, 2nd Div., Chap. 1, for a fuller discussion of death as having this role in human being. 28 EM 167; IM 133. 29 Ibid. 30 Cf. O’Brien, Guide to Antigone, 58; as well as Lidell and Scott’s A GreekEnglish Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968). 31 EM 168; IM 133. 32 EM 168; IM 134. 33 EM 169; IM 134. 34 Cf. EM 169; IM 134f. 35 Cf. EM 169; IM 135. 36 See n35. 37 Cf. Heidegger, ‘Überwindung der Metaphysik,’ in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1954), 91; trans. Joan Stambaugh as ‘Overcoming Metaphysics,’ in The End of Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 110. 38 Ibid. 39 Rilke, ‘Neunte Elegie,’ in Duineser Elegien, 40. Cf. also H 319; PLT 141; and Donald Prater, A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). 40 US 35ff.; WL 161ff. The sense of ‘strange’ here is not exactly the same as that in the ode, but it is a further development of it in the context of Trakl’s and Heidegger’s thought eighteen years after the lecture course Einführung in die Metaphysik. Interestingly, though the essay on Trakl was

The Path of a Thinking, Poeticizing Building 185 not published until 1959, it was composed the same year that Einführung in die Metaphysik (which appeared in 1953) was edited by Heidegger for publication. 41 Jeffers, Selected Poetry, 594.

10 There Where Nothing Happens: The Poetry of Space in Heidegger and Arellano remmon e. barbaza

In the series of public lectures titled ‘The Nature of Language,’ Heidegger says that thinking and poetry ‘dwell in the same neighborhood’ (WL 69–70) and that ‘each needs the other in its neighborhood, each in its fashion, when it comes to ultimates’ (ibid., 70). And because ‘the nature of art is poetry,’ as Heidegger says in the essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (PLT 75), we can also say that thinking and art dwell in the same neighbourhood. Thus we might view Heidegger and Juan Arellano, a Filipino architect and artist, dwelling in the same neighbourhood. Arellano’s works indeed bear a remarkable affinity to the thought of Heidegger, particularly on human dwelling and technology, as I intend to show in this chapter. Perhaps also by some coincidence, they lived during the same period. Arellano was born in Manila in 1888, Heidegger in Messkirch, in southwestern Germany, in 1889. Arellano died in 1960, Heidegger sixteen years later, in 1976. Unlike Heidegger, however, Arellano is almost completely forgotten. Even those whom one would expect to know him have no idea who he was. The architect Paulo Alcazaren, who teaches at the University of the Philippines College of Architecture, tells us that hardly any of his students in architectural history know Arellano, or for that matter any prewar Filipino architect.1 Thus hardly anyone knows that the neoclassical Post Office Building in Manila is Arellano’s work, and that so is the art deco Metropolitan Theater that stands nearby. These magnificent structures, and others in their vicinity, have stood there for decades, motionless and speechless to be sure, and now sadly being relegated to oblivion.2 And what of his paintings, sketches, studies, and sculptures? In the eyes of the modern technological man, nothing seems to be hap-

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pening in works such as those of Arellano and there is nothing to be gained by becoming aware of such works. Indeed, what could possibly happen in Arellano’s still-life paintings? In his many landscapes? In his buildings, which have stood motionless and speechless for years? What then, if nothing happens in these works? We do not want to have anything to do with anything that has nothing in it, with any place or work where nothing happens. What else to do with nothing except – nothing? What is it with this nothing? What is it with the nothing that we cannot bear, that we are so sure we have nothing whatsoever to do with? But are we not forcing the issue? Shall we pretend that something, in fact, happens in, for example, a still-life painting, so that we may at least be considered cultured, or so that we may pass for people who have fine aesthetic sensibilities? Are we playing with words here? Are not both artist and thinker pulling our leg? Heidegger once wrote that in truth, ‘the nothing’ always makes itself felt, in moments of restlessness, or boredom, or (especially) when we are faced with the prospect of death, either our own or that of a loved one.3 Such moments can be deeply unsettling, to say the least. We begin to experience the world as uncanny. Beings slip away, as it were, from our hands. The world is no longer the meaningful world that we had always thought it to be. We begin to feel no longer at home in the world. Hence, such an experience can also be quite terrifying. T.S. Eliot seems to have captured such a moment in the Four Quartets: I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away – Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing – 4

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Indeed, the nothing is just there, has always been there, making itself felt each day in our lives. But for the most part, we fail to come face to face with the nothing, because as soon as it makes itself felt we suppress it, deny it, reject it, usually by keeping ourselves entertained or engaged in one new thing after another. And this is not limited to those chasing after the latest gadget or getting into the new ‘in thing.’ Even many of those who work in academe do this all the time. They go from one theory to another, keep themselves updated with the latest book or thinker, not quite unlike shifting to the latest cellular phone or computer accessory every now and then. But, alas, each time we suppress or reject the nothing, we also refuse to be brought before being itself. For being and nothing are one. Being is not a being. We are surrounded by beings all the time, but not one of these beings is being itself. Yet ‘being is always the being of a being’ (BT-S 5). It might help us understand what all of this means if we think of being as a verb, and a being, or beings, as a noun, as this or that object or thing. Let us think of art, for example. Every genuine artist will tell us that neither he nor his artworks, nor both combined, are art itself. Art is much bigger, higher than every artist or artwork; bigger, higher than all artists and artworks combined. If we think of art as a verb, then we see it as the event of the unfolding of art. Yet art is always art that takes place through the work of an artist. Art is always art that we find in a work of art. As being is not a being, so art is not an artist or an artwork. As being is always the being of beings, so art is always the art of an artist or in an artwork. Even athletes seem to know something about the difference between being and beings. We hear athletes say ‘for the love of the game,’ or even something like ‘this will be good for the game,’ and they say this as if the game is sacred to them. Every true athlete knows that the game is not the players themselves, or this or that particular match. Yet the game, or play, is always the play of players. Play unfolds in the playing of players. So, too, we might say that humanity is not a human being. Humanity is not I, a human being though I am, or you, who are also a human being. Yet humanity is not an empty concept that floats up there. Humanity is the event of the unfolding of being human. Humanity is always the humanity of this or that human being, of the concrete person that you are and that I am. But in all these, where do we find the nothing? We hear the nothing

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when we say that being is not a being. Art is not an artist or a work of art. Play is not a player. Humanity is not a human being. Because being is not a being, being transcends beings. When we fail to heed the nothing, we are unable to transcend beings. We get caught with mere beings as objectively present. To fail to heed the nothing thus means to fail to heed being itself. We can get caught up with artworks and artists and fail to heed that which is not an artwork or an artist. What happens then? We begin to objectify a work of art. A work of art becomes an item of monetary value, is appraised and later put up for auction. It becomes an item that we manage and maintain in a museum. It comes in handy as a piece of conversation or as the subject of a coffee-table book. It becomes an object of scientific inquiry, as has happened to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. We print a Monet on cute coffee mugs or a Cézanne on fancy mouse pads. We hang a Van Gogh on our walls, whichever one happens to match our furniture. We reduce Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagione to a cellular phone ring tone or elevator music, or hear it played over and over again on the telephone lest we lose our patience, if not sanity, waiting for someone to speak to us from the other end. In all of these, art is nowhere to be found. Art is barred from unfolding. Or perhaps we bar ourselves from the experience of its primordial unfolding.5 When we have fallen into a ‘forgetfulness of being’6 and are engaged solely in beings as objectively present, it is not only works of art that are objectified according to our whims, but also every other thing that we encounter or use for our own purposes. Is it any wonder that ours is an age characterized by man’s technological subjugation and mastery of nature? Are not we human beings the greatest threat to the continued existence of life on earth? Do we not indeed sense something monstrous behind the whole question of human cloning? Is not even God objectified? We are thus brought before the very profound mystery of being itself. Since being and nothing are one, as we saw earlier, and since it is the nothing that grants us access to being, the rejection of the nothing is itself what leads to annihilation. It is the very denial and the very refusal to come face to face with the nothing that gives rise to the horror of nihilism. The rejection of the nothing is nihilism. And as we reject the nothing, and therefore being itself, and are merely preoccupied with beings as objectively present, in the end we are left with absolute nothing, for beings can never be truly experienced as they are except in their

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being. But when we pay heed to the nothing, we are thrust back into the world and see beings precisely in their being, perhaps for the first time, and in each case ever anew. If, therefore, it seems to us that in the works of Arellano, nothing seems to be happening, let us not turn away. Instead let us bear the weight of the nothing. When we do so, when we can muster the courage – and yes, the humility – to do so, perhaps we will be granted access to being, and thereby to the essential unfolding of beings themselves. Let us, for example, consider one of Arellano’s works – an undated watercolour on paper. This is work #26 in the Arellano exhibit that was held at the Lopez Museum in Manila from late 2005 to early 2006. The organizers have titled it Cloudy Day. The painting, which is dominated by dark hues of grey, blue, green, and brown – colours that, except for the grey, one would find in a typical rice field – seems to depict a very quiet scene. But anyone who has stood outside in a storm will, on closer examination, sense a moment full of tension, with huge, dark clouds gathering over a ricefield. One is overwhelmed by the dark sky that seems to stretch to infinity, threatening to unleash a storm. One knows that it is quiet only for the moment, that this is only the calm before the storm. Below the overwhelmingly huge and dark clouds stand small, fragile nipa huts, about five of them, huddled together like anxious little chicks caught in the rain. Here we get early hints of primordial space: the nipa huts huddle near one another and the field, and in the far distance are mountains. Still farther – indeed, beyond the reach of the villagers (farmers, presumably) – is the sky. Those who dwell in these huts know their place both on earth and under the sky. They know what is near and what is far. There is no one in sight, yet one imagines that the farmers are inside their huts, huddled together, bracing for the storm. Perhaps the viewer senses their apprehension, their awareness of the danger the storm will bring with it. But at bottom there is simple surrender, quiet acceptance. The farmers who dwell here know the lot of mortals. There is no cursing of the heavens, no frustration or anger at the disruption the storm may cause. They have been through this many times before. If they were to utter anything, perhaps it would be a prayer for deliverance. Even as they stand before the divinities, they know the lot of mortals. How can they curse the heavens? The same heavens have blessed them with rain and sun, to water the earth, to nourish their fields, to sustain their lives.

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Do we – we who live in the modern technological age – do we still know what it is to stand in the middle of a storm? Do we really still know the near and the far? Or have we not lost the sense of primordial space, the sense of our place on earth and under the sky? Have we not succeeded in denying our mortal lot? Have we not driven away the gods? Do we even know that we are losing that which is essential to us? Are we even aware that something that once belonged to us has long disappeared? Arellano must have sensed this loss. He once said: ‘I want to paint the things that struck me as beautiful, the habits, the modes of our people, the things that will disappear with the encroachments of mechanization and the Atomic Age.’7 Here was an artist who was aware of an impending loss. And he painted – for he loved to paint – that which we were about to lose. He painted that which was about to disappear, perhaps in the hope of preserving what is essential to us, that we might one day be awakened to that which matters most to us. Heidegger also spoke of such a disappearance. In a 1950 lecture he observed how – especially with the coming of modern air transportation, radio and television – great distances in time and space had been abolished. Such an abolition of distances, however, had not ‘brought the near’: Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range. Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness. (PLT 165)

The fact that the frantic abolition of distances does not bring nearness can make us pause and ask whether we really know what nearness is in the first place. But to which modern technological mind would it ever occur to ask what nearness is? It would perhaps not be unlike the proverbial fish swimming in the midst of the ocean and asking where he can find water. Do we really know that in which we already are? Shouldn’t we indeed persist in questioning? Heidegger does just that, as he continues:

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What is nearness, if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest distances to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances? What is nearness if, along with its failure to appear, remoteness also remains absent? What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near – is, as it were, without distance? (PLT 165–6)

Thus, unbeknownst to modern technological man, the abolition of distances, instead of making life more livable, has brought about profoundly unsettling events that threaten life itself. Like a prophet calling out in the desert, Heidegger warns: Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distancelessness more unearthly than everything bursting apart? Man stares at what the explosion of the atom bomb could bring with it. He does not see that the atom bomb and its explosion are the mere final emission of what has long since taken place, has already happened. Not to mention the single hydrogen bomb, whose triggering, thought through to its utmost potential, might be enough to snuff out all life on earth. What is this helpless anxiety still waiting for, if the terrible has already happened? The terrifying is unsettling; it places everything outside its own nature. What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies? It shows itself and hides itself in the way in which everything presences, namely, in the fact that despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent. (PLT 166)

Both Arellano and Heidegger, artist and thinker, saw the terrifying. But only those who can see the realm that is safeguarded in primordial peace and freedom really know the terrifying.8 Both Arellano and Heidegger, artist and thinker, saw the unsettling. And only those who know what it means for us human beings to settle, to dwell on earth in primordial peace and freedom, only those can sense what is unsettling. Both Arellano and Heidegger, artist and thinker, saw what was bound to disappear, to be annihilated. But only those who know what it means to let things appear as they are, in their own terms, only those who know what it means to let beings be, to let beings essentially unfold, only those can sense the danger of disappearance and annihilation. Heidegger understood the words of the poet-philosopher Friedrich Hö lderlin: Voll verdienst, doch dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser

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Erde (VA 181–98): ‘Full of merit, yet poetically man dwells on earth’ (PLT 213–29). What does it mean to dwell poetically on earth? The Greek word poi•sis comes from the verb poiein, which means to bring forth. The poet brings forth, pro-duces, hence also the Filipino word for poet, makata, which means he who creates, siyang kumakatha. The bringing-forth of poi•sis is a pro-duction, but not production in the sense of modern technology. The bringing-forth of poi•sis is more akin to the bringing-forth of phusis, the Greek word for what for us would be nature, though phusis and natura are not the same. Phusis as experienced by the Greeks is that which arises by itself, the self-emerging.9 What is brought forth in and by phusis is everything that we are blessed with on this earth – trees, for example, and their fruits, a spring of water, cows and carabaos that help us till the fields and provide us with milk. To dwell poetically is to live in a way that does not encroach on the bringing-forth of phusis but that takes part in this very bringing-forth. Phusis, nature, is poetry of the highest order. One wonders not, then, why artists, who are poets in the essential sense of the word, are drawn to the poetry of phusis and feel called upon to depict such poetry in various forms. We see this, for example, in Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagione, in Hö lderlin’s ode to the Rhine, in the landscapes and still lifes of painters like Cézanne and Van Gogh and photographers like Ansel Adams. Arellano was thus no exception, having painted many landscapes and still lifes that depicted his profound sensitivity to the wonders of nature. One can only imagine how powerfully each of these artists had been moved by nature so that they felt compelled to express the experience in poetry, music, painting, and other forms of art. If nature in the sense of phusis is poetry of the highest order, it follows that every great artist – insofar as all art is poetry – is a poet of the first order. Every artist is called upon to give voice to the bringing-forth of phusis. Not all are called to be artists or poets in the restricted sense that we commonly know. But all of us are called to dwell poetically on this earth. Indeed that is just what it means to be human – to dwell poetically on earth. We are dwellers, and dwellers are we on earth. Is it also any wonder that John the Evangelist, in describing how God became man, wrote: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’?10 Heidegger also tells us that to dwell on earth already means to dwell under the sky, as mortals and before divinities. He calls these four – earth and sky, mortals and divinities – the fourfold. We saw the unfolding of these four in Arellano’s Cloudy Day. Arellano’s works are replete with images of the earth and man’s dependence on it. Through them one can experience ‘the clemency and inclemency of the weather’ (PLT

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149). In them, too, are depictions of the divinities, as in the paintings of churches, of an indigenous Filipino uttering an invocation to the anito (gods). Arellano was also deeply aware of our mortal nature, as we see in other of his paintings: exhausted farmers resting under the shade of a tree; an old woman reading by the window, bathed in morning light; the face of a dead man; and a girl weeping over her dead mother. What does all of this tell us about the poetry of space, as depicted especially by Arellano? What is space, then, understood poetically? According to Heidegger, poetry measures. It measures the span between heaven and earth, between mortals and divinities, as we read in the following: Man, as man, has always measured himself with and against something heavenly … The taking of measure is what is poetic in dwelling. Poetry is a measuring … In poetry there takes place what all measuring is in the ground of its being. Hence it is necessary to pay heed to the basic act of measuring. That consists in man’s first of all taking the measure which then is applied in every measuring act. In poetry the taking of measure occurs. To write poetry is measure-taking, understood in the strict sense of the word, by which man first receives the measure for the breadth of his being. (PLT 221–2)

This span that poetry measures is primordial space; it is primordial nearness. From this primordial nearness we experience the near and the far. We saw hints of this primordial space in Arellano’s painting of a cloudy day. The measuring of poetry opens up that primordial space, where things can appear as they are, where humans can dwell as mortals on earth and under the sky, in communion with the divinities. In preserving and safeguarding primordial space – the realm of peace and freedom – the measuring of poetry preserves and safeguards the near and far. And because it is the measuring of poetry that opens up primordial space, poetry itself becomes the measure. The measure of what? The measure of our dwelling on earth: ‘Poetry builds up the very nature of dwelling. Poetry and dwelling not only do not exclude each other; on the contrary, poetry and dwelling belong together, each calling for the other’ (PLT 227). Modern technology also measures, of course. But it measures in a way that calculates and objectifies for the sake of control and domination. The measuring of modern technology does not open up primor-

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dial space, but constricts it so that nearness is abolished, so that what remains are indifferent points in an indifferent space, where nothing is near or far and everything is reduced to distancelessness. Like Heidegger, Arellano saw the difference between the poetry of space and the technology of space. The poetry of space opens and frees beings into their essential unfolding. The poetry of space allows us to breathe and thus to give voice to that which arises in phusis. Indeed, it enables us to dwell poetically on earth. In contrast, the technology of space constricts and subjects beings to its control and manipulation – indeed, as we saw, it even annihilates beings. The technology of space drives us from our dwelling place on earth, turning us into slaves in an alien land that is really no land but a wasteland. Even Nietzsche saw this. His Z arathustra warns: ‘Die Wü ste wächst; weh dem, der Wü sten birgt!’ (The wasteland grows: woe to him who harbors wastelands!). 11 That we feel harassed in a world full of technological gadgets that are supposed to make life easier and more comfortable tells us there is something disturbing on a deeper level of our human existence. Beneath the orderly and efficient world of high-rise buildings and shiny, smart technological apparatuses is a wasteland of human emptiness. Alas, we ourselves harbour such a world, without having the slightest idea that we keep on building wastelands, ever-expanding and ever-constricting. Like Heidegger, Arellano understood primordial space in the concrete. Primordial space is not a concept up there. As ‘being is always the being of a being,’ so primordial space is always the space that you and I experience concretely, within which we traverse the near and the far. And perhaps this also means the concrete space we call our native land. For no one is born in abstract space. There is something about being truly human that involves intimacy with the land of our birth.12 There is something about being truly human that makes us long to be rooted in our land. Simone Weil herself saw rootedness as one of the essential needs of the soul.13 Again, is it any wonder that every great artist, every great poet, every great writer, has an intimate and profound knowledge of his own land as can only be found in their works? We see this dramatically in Arellano. His early works focused on classical art, choosing mostly architectural subjects in Europe. In his later works we see more and more scenes from his native land, ‘the habits, the modes of our people,’ which unmistakably depict the longing to return to one’s own land. We have heard Arellano speak of the beautiful, the habits, the modes

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of our people, and the things that will disappear with the encroachments of mechanization and the Atomic Age. The word ‘habit’ comes from the Latin habitare, to dwell. Habits are mores; they are what people are used to doing. When we hear the expression ‘corporate ethic,’ for instance, we mean a company’s way of doing things, its set of moral standards, that which they are in the habit of doing. The German language, too, retains this fundamental relation between habits, or ethics, and dwelling. Gewohnheiten means ‘habits,’ while wohnen means ‘to dwell.’ The German wohnen and the English ‘wont’ also reflect the relationship between dwelling and habit. When we say, ‘He is wont to read before sleeping,’ we mean that he is in the habit of reading before sleeping. Hence dwelling and ethics are essentially related. We hear this essential relation even more in Greek, as Aristotle reminds us in the Nicomachean Ethics. 8thik•, moral virtue, and ethos, habit, indeed sound almost the same.14 We see, then, that dwelling is original ethics, is ‘originary’ ethics. Especially having seen the terror of annihilation that has already long happened, and how this annihilation threatens all beings – human beings most of all – we can now see how we can speak of dwelling poetically as being the originary ethics, as being the highest ethical command. The originary ethics of poetic dwelling alone opens up primordial space within which humans can be free and can set others free. ‘I have always loved to paint,’ says Arellano. ‘I want to paint the things that struck me as beautiful, the habits, the modes of our people, the things that will disappear with the encroachments of mechanization and the Atomic Age.’ We said in the beginning that in the works of Arellano nothing seems to be happening. Let it be so. Let the nothing happen before us, and let us bear the happening of the nothing before us, hard enough for us to be struck by what is beautiful, by the habits, the modes of our people, lest they forever be made to disappear under the monstrosity and the terror that is our age. Nothing less than our being able to dwell on earth is at stake.

NOTES 1 Paulo Alcazaren, ‘Juan M de Guzman Arellano: Renaissance Man,’ Philippine Star, 26 November 2005. 2 There are some signs that Arellano is far from being forgotten. Between

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late 2005 and early 2006, for instance, the Lopez Museum in Manila offered an exhibition of his works. But the present author was told by the organizers that that was only the third exhibition on Arellano since he died in 1960 – surely too few for someone who is considered the father of modern Filipino architecture. There are reports that the City of Manila is planning to renovate the Metropolitan Theater at an estimated cost of about US$3.8 million, but less than $100,000 of this amount has been approved, and at this writing – months if not years since the inception of the plan – work is yet to begin. 3 Perhaps the most important discussion of ‘the nothing’ by Heidegger is found in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ BW 93–110. 4 T.S. Eliot, ‘East Coker,’ III, in Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber and Faber, 1974). 5 The word ‘primordial’ (ursprü nglich) is a terminus technicus in Heidegger, and it is also a key word in the present essay. Heidegger gives an indication of the meaning of this word as early as in Being and Time (BT-S 214), but a passage in the ‘Origin of the Work of Art’ that explains the meaning of Ursprung is also helpful for us here: ‘To originate something by a leap, to bring something into being from out of its essential source in a founding leap – this is what the word “origin” [U rsprung, literally, “primal leap”] means’ (PLT 77–8). Ürsprunglich is also rendered as ‘original’ in many other translations. Something is primordial not only in the sense that it is a source of essential meaning, but also in the sense of its being ontologically prior to other possible experiences of the same. We can see this in space or distance. Strictly speaking, no one experiences centimetres or kilometres of distance. But everyone experiences ‘near’ and ‘far.’ Hardly anyone bothers about the actual dimensions of a dining table; at times one may find the need to have an exact measurement of it, but only in order to determine how it can fit in a dining room or be carried through a door. This precise measurement of the dining table, as well as the room, is only an abstraction from the experience of nearness that one knows especially when sharing meals with loved ones. Another way of seeing the meaning of ‘primordial’ is the way an experience strikes us at the core of our being. Knowing the exact distance of a particular star from the earth does not in itself necessarily inspire awe and wonder. If it seems it does, it is really only in relation to our primordial experience of nearness here on earth. Strictly speaking, there is no ‘near’ or ‘far’ in science. By contrast, simply standing under the sky at night can evoke that sense of awe and wonder about how small we are and how vast the ‘whole of beings’ is, which is perhaps what Kant must have experienced and what made him write: ‘Two things fill the

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Remmon E. Barbaza mind with every new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.’ Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. T.K. Abbott (Amherst: Prometheus, 1996), 191 (161 in Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft from standard Kants gesammelten Schriften, hrsg. v. der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften [Berlin: 1902–10]). Seinsvergessenheit, also rendered as ‘oblivion of being’ in other translations, is an expression that has been associated with Heidegger ever since the publication of Being and Time. See BT-S 2, 19, 311–12, for example. Ernesto T. Bitong, ‘Portrait of an Architect in Retirement,’ Sunday Times Magazine, 16 June 1957, 6. These words from Arellano were also printed in the brochure for the 2005–6 exhibition and were mounted on the wall at the Lopez Museum. Apart from the word ‘primordial’ (ursprü nglich), which we explained in note 5, two other words, ‘peace’ and ‘freedom,’ need explanation here, especially since they have become so trite and worn out that their essential meaning is lost. ‘Freedom’ is widely understood as simply the condition or state of being without constraint, and therefore a condition that allows one to do what one wills. ‘Peace,’ on the other hand, is commonly understood simply as the absence of war or conflict. Heidegger sees these words not only in a radically different way, but also as essentially related. In ‘On the Essence of Truth,’ he says that freedom, as essentially understood, is even prior to both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom (the former meaning ‘freedom from …,’ the latter ‘freedom to …’). Thought primordially, ‘freedom is the engagement in the disclosure of beings as such’ (BW 126). In ‘Building Dwelling Thinking,’ Heidegger even shows how the two are essentially related: ‘The word for peace, Friede, means the free, das Frye, and fry means: preserved from harm and danger, preserved from something, safeguarded. To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we “free” it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace. To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free, the preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature’ (PLT 149; BW 351). It is thus important to see that Heidegger’s use of the words ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ is prior to the political realm, since the essential unfolding of human beings must reveal itself before even something like the realm of the political can be opened. For a discussion of poetry, phusis, and technology, see Heidegger, ‘The

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Question Concerning Technology,’ in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. and intro. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977), 3–35, esp. 10–11. 10 John 1:14. 11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. 4, hrsg. V. Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 380. 12 Of course one can find numerous exceptions here, where people have decided to leave the land of their birth and to settle in a different land, and still live profoundly meaningful lives. My linking of rootedness to the land of one’s birth is not meant to evoke cheap romanticism, much less provincialism or, worse, dangerous nationalism. Rather, the link has to do more with the Heideggerian insight of thrownness and finitude. It is humbling to know that, despite the many wonderful places on earth and the many exciting possibilities of being rooted in a particular place, I ‘happen’ to have been born in the Philippines and not elsewhere, that I am more familiar with carabao’s milk than cow’s milk, that I eat more rice than potatoes or bread, that I have been nourished by the fruits of the labour of Filipino farmers and not by anyone else, and that I feel more at home with sunlight in my home province in Laguna than with the sunlight in, say, Provence or Tuscany, however much I have enjoyed those places. I am also reminded of the simple joy in the face of an Afghan farmer who was being interviewed on television after the fall of the Taliban. Smiling broadly, he told the interviewer how excited he was to return to his native land and how he could no longer wait to begin planting again. Seeing how ravaged Afghanistan was during those times, one might wonder how this farmer could even think of returning there, let alone be excited by the thought of it. And yet there he was, filled with joy at the prospect of returning home. Around the same time, an old lady from Albay in the southern Philippines was being interviewed on television by an international crew. The majestic Mayon Volcano had just erupted and the residents were being warned by experts and government authorities against returning to their homes. The old lady, again with a smile on her face, showed different scars on her skin from the many times Mayon had erupted, telling the interviewer exactly which scar she got from which year. One would think that it was sheer stupidity for people like her to keep on returning to their place even though it was always threatened by volcanic eruptions. And yet there she was, ready to return as soon as the volcano had gone back to sleep. One can also think of writers like John Steinbeck, who once commented that no man should be buried on alien soil, and who had expressly wished to be buried in his

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family plot in Salinas, California. For certain, there are many others, ordinary women and men, who have the same wish as Steinbeck, without thereby showing any hint of cheap romanticism or dangerous nationalism. 13 Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 14 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a18–19. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2, trans. W.D. Ross, rev. J.O. Urmson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

11 Meeting Place thomas davis

This distinctive being, the ens quod natum est convenire cum omni ente [‘the being whose nature it is to meet with all other beings’], is the soul (anima). – Heidegger, quoting Thomas Aquinas in Being and Time1 And the oldest of gods, Earth the immortal, the untiring, he wears away, turning the soil with the brood of horses, as year after year the ploughs move to and fro. – Sophocles, Antigone2

One cannot know the earth as one cannot know one’s death. Both stand there, at best right by one, alongside and other, ecstatically abiding. Perhaps, however, one can be invited to neighbour the earth, as one can sometimes find death as one’s companion. But how? How would one receive such an invitation, and how follow it out? How could it be put to the test? I believe you must respond to these questions from where you stand, from a particular and local placement, as these questions address you in that place. The Blues stand there: I look up and trace the shadow line of trees as they withdraw into the long, slow cleft. It is the cleft that invites me, the movement of the cleft by which the mountains fold back on themselves, drawing down the open sky, releasing the flowing fields. And I find myself responding to this invitation by asking: Is there a place to walk in the shadow of this cleft, a mete place to stop and work, perhaps one day to build a home? And this question hovers suspended in an edgi-

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ness that suffuses the distance so intimately necessary to this gesture of invitation, an edginess that cuts through nostalgia and hope to render vivid an implacable indifference. – So suspended, yet still invited, I wonder: What will give words their weight in responding to such invitation? Where indeed shall I find such words? To place these questions I shall set the story that Wendell Berry tells of his encounter with a hawk one day while farming next to Heidegger’s recollection of the greeting that took place with an oak along the pathway he had walked since childhood. I want to elucidate these meetings between farmer and hawk, thinker and oak, freely varying some of their structural elements to better see what is at issue in them. Having drawn out these meetings I want to see what questions their juxtaposition evokes, and bring those questions back to the question these mountains invite about being next to the earth: What could it mean to neighbour the earth in the face of the sense of indifferent displacement that comes over me as an edgy suspension? Berry’s Hawk At the end of July 1981, while I was using a team of horses to mow a small triangular hillside pasture that is bordered on two sides by trees, I was suddenly aware of wings close below me. It was a young red-tailed hawk, who flew up into a walnut tree. I mowed on to the turn and stopped the team. The hawk then glided to the ground not twenty feet away. I got off the mower, stood and watched, even spoke, and the hawk showed no fear. I could see every feather distinctly, claw and beak and eye, the creamy down of the breast. Only when I took a step toward him, separating myself from the team and mower, did he fly. While I mowed three or four rounds, he was clearly watching me, stooping to see under the leaves that screened me from him. Again, when I could not find him, I stooped, saying to myself, ‘This is what he did to look at me,’ and as I did so I saw him looking at me. Why did he come? To catch mice? Had he seen me scare one out of the grass? Or was it curiosity?3

Let us begin to read this simply: Berry has an unusual experience with a hawk, given the normal fears of animals for humans. He is aware that ‘A human, of course, cannot speak with authority of the motives of hawks. I am aware of the possibility of explaining the episode merely by the hawk’s youth and inexperience’ (13). Thus while he is aware of

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the ‘pathetic fallacy,’ he is still willing to ask about the hawk’s ‘curiosity.’ Why? Because of the place in which this encounter took place: ‘The hawk came because of the conjunction of the small pasture and its wooded borders, of open hunting ground and the security of trees. This is the phenomenon of edge or margin that we know to be one of the powerful attractions of a diversified landscape, both to wildlife and to humans … But another difference is important here: the difference between a large pasture and a small one … The pasture I was mowing was a patch – small, intimate, nowhere distant from its edges’ (13). The boundaries of a patch make it possible to talk about one thing drawing near another, and thus showing a kind of ‘curiosity.’ Berry goes on to say that ‘the hawk was emboldened to come so near because, though he obviously recognized me as a man, I was there with the team of horses, with whom he familiarly and confidently shared the world’ (13–14). Here the sense of the ‘boundaries’ of a patch are expanded: the possibility of Berry’s encounter with the hawk is determined by the presence of a sharing, the sharing of the common world of animals. Which is what? I cannot say, and neither does Berry. Rather, he emphasizes the following: ‘Such encounters involve another margin – the one between domesticity and wildness – that attracts us irresistibly; they are among the best rewards of outdoor work and among the reasons for loving to farm’ (14). But where are the boundaries between domesticity and wildness here? Is the team of horses domestic or wild? Should we say that the hawk’s shared world with them is that of the mowing – call it the domesticated rhythm of mowing – or that of the patch itself? But can a ‘patch’ be a native place for hawks? or even for horses? Berry does not ask these questions, and I shall not directly pursue them. Rather I want to reconsider the significance of the original encounter. Berry understands the restraint of this patch, the working compass of its boundaries, as a place that sets the possibility of an encounter with wildness. Yet it is the care in that restraint that establishes the pasture as a patch. His working this patch follows from his care for it. It is in his hands, in the rhythm of their using and being used. It extends his hands to working with horses. It means he is bound to use this team of horses to work this patch. And that binding works a given field by way of a particular rhythm of use into this particular place, this patch. Berry’s attunement to these specifics of careful use makes him ready for the possibility of a strange encounter. But again, what of the hawk? Isn’t it simply anthropocentric to attribute ‘curiosity’ or ‘motives’ to it? That the hawk appears ‘curious’ runs against the expected limits of

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the fear that attunes the relation between animals and humans. But the care of Berry’s presence also violates these expected limits. Do we know what attunes that care? Berry shows it when he stops and exposes himself in the way he turns towards this wild animal: In imitating the gestures of the hawk he extends the possibility of greeting, like offering an open hand within the acknowledgment of difference. This invites only the possibility of response and leaves open what could follow. And it can do this because of the place in which such gestures can begin to make sense. Berry goes on: ‘All of us – the hawk, the horses, and I – were there for our benefit and, to some extent, for our mutual benefit: The horses live from the pasture and maintain it with their work, grazing and manure; the team and I together furnish hunting ground to the hawk; the hawk serves us by controlling the field mouse population’ (14). How should we read the language of ‘benefit’ here? Berry is talking about work, about what it could mean to acknowledge the interwoven necessities of working a patch. This involves the joining of a circle: Berry cares for this patch and the patch as a place calls on such care; the patch arises as a patch from the work of such care, which itself reveals the interweaving of a series of necessities that gather in this place to call back on that care to claim its attention. Strictly speaking such care is not Berry’s possession to give or take. It calls on him as his calling, it gives his hands the rhythm of their use. And that use extends itself to the different rhythm of the horses, and to the sudden appearance of the hawk: the patch arises as a place out of the correspondence of interweaving uses, correspondences that include the invitation to pause in one’s work to give way to the presence of another. And what, again, of the wildness of the hawk? The wildness of the hawk appears in a place of margins governed by an interplay of different rhythms of use. Its wildness appears as the maintenance of a kind of distance within the intimacy of that interplay. Berry respects that distance. What, then, does the hawk offer? A different rhythm, another possibility, possibly violent. A different intersection of use that can also claim our attention but that stands there as other, as calling for an acknowledgment of difference. The possibility of such acknowledgement happens by way of the circle that Berry joins, the calling to which he responds, the interplay that is manifest in the labour of his hands. Let me focus what I take to be the import of Berry’s story in the following way. Wendell Berry tells a story of how a hawk interrupted his working a corner of his patch with a team of horses. It is a story about the moment

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when one rhythm of use was interrupted by another. The wonder, the pause, of that extended moment takes place as the shock of suddenly facing an invitation to be drawn into that other rhythm. And so he stood there suspended yet invited by a presence that was wild yet somehow drew him in, drew him into a reflection that would become this remembrance. This reflection extends itself to the thought that wildness erupts in the space of a border, at the margin that divides land into different regions, different places of encounter. This proliferation makes greeting possible by opening up the intersection of alternative places: the hedgerow, the open field, the shadowed line of trees, the farmhouse, the riverbed. Berry knows such greeting. It comes with the work of his hands. It comes in his pausing in that work at the edge of that patch in the presence of a hawk that has also paused. It is a moment – and a place – of exposure that allows him to speak from his own experience of encounter. He knows the danger of speculation here, and sentiments of nostalgia and hope. He does not need to be schooled in the pathetic fallacy. The words he finds are those offered him in the remembrance of an encounter. That offering takes place within its own rhythm of use. I shall come back to raise a question about this other rhythm when Berry’s encounter is juxtaposed with Heidegger’s. Heidegger’s Oak Der Feldweg (The Pathway) enacts a journey of commemoration.4 That journey has roughly five parts: the setting out from the park gate; the arrival at the place where the Feldweg greets an oak; the threat to being able to listen to what unfolds from that greeting; the response to that threat in a transformation in attunement; and finally, the return to the place from which the Feldweg set out as a rediscovery of the meaning of origin. Of these five parts I shall elucidate only the greeting. This greeting is the opening of a kind of dialogue: the pathway greets the oak, the oak speaks to the pathway. In the interplay of this dialogue the pathway presents a message. The purpose of Heidegger’s recollection is to locate this message, show the way one can listen to it, show the threat to such listening, and bring one back to the place where one begins. All of this is introduced by way of the encounter with the oak. Let me recreate this encounter in the following way. An oak stands at the edge of a trail. Beneath it is a bench. On it are books. A young boy reads, gets stuck, stands up to wander to clear his head. He walks along the trail that draws him further into the woods.

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He passes a farmer going to mow his fields. They pass in silent acknowledgment, each nodding to the other. The silence of the gesture brings out the silence in which each walks. That silence companions them both: the farmer walking within the anticipated compass of his work, the boy walking in order to return to his books. The silence accompanies the steps of each; it is their escort. This accompaniment unfolds the trail before them, draws them along, draws them in. It offers itself as a particular rhythm. In that rhythm it gives each his own place: the coming work of the farmer, the coming work of the thinker. When the young boy returns to the bench, he is ready again to begin to work, as the farmer is ready to begin to mow. From this scene, which goes beyond Heidegger’s text, we can see several elements important to the encounter with the oak: the Feldweg, the pathway, is that which goes before the Pfad, the actual trail, drawing it out through the fields. As such it is a dimension that one can acknowledge or not acknowledge. One acknowledges it by being drawn into it, and for that one must be ready, open for a particular rhythm of walking. For the thinker this happens as a particular kind of help: it is the solitary entrance into a silence that companions the unfolding of the pathway as it draws out the trail. One walks alone in silence and returns to begin again. That one pauses, that one wanders in the company of silence, that one returns – all this is part of the work of thinking itself. The pathway is there next to one, alongside and other, ecstatically abiding, offered in silence, as this unfolding movement – which does not end with just the opening of the pathway’s help. Let us see how it unfolds. Heidegger returns to the oak that ‘frequently carries one off’ through the memory of childhood play, the oak bark turned into boats, and then: ‘Meanwhile, the hardness and smell of oakwood began to speak more distinctly of the slowness and constancy with which the tree grew’ (F 35). The play of remembered imagination sets the context for turning to touch and smell. This hardness, this smell. Then suddenly a shift to the oak itself speaking of the slowness and constancy of growth. Thought moves, transposes itself through the hardness and the smell to attend to growth as such. The encounter with the oak, recollected, playful, imagined, brings about a transposition, a displacement, through this touch and this smell to consider what growing itself means: Die Eiche selber sprach, dass in solchem Wachstum allein gegründet wird, was dauert und fruchtet: dass wachsen heisst: der Weite des Himmels sich öffnen und

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zugleich in das Dunkel der Erde wurzeln; dass alles Gediegene nur gedeiht, wenn der Mensch gleich recht beides ist: bereit dem Anspruch des höchsten Himmels und aufgehoben im Schutz der tragenden Erde. The oak itself spoke, that only in such growth is grounded what lasts and bears fruit: to grow means this: to open itself to the expanse of the sky and at the same time to root into the darkness of the earth; all that is native only thrives when human being is at the same time right by both: ready for the claim of highest heaven and kept safe in the protection of the bearing earth. (ibid.)

I want to slowly and carefully work through the movement of this complex sentence, beginning from the ‘hinge,’ indicated by the semicolon amidst the succession of colons, on which it turns: dass alles Gediegene nur gedeiht, wenn der Mensch gleich recht beides ist: all that is native only thrives when human being is at the same time right by both:

Consider first the phrase ‘dass alles Gediegene nur gedeiht.’ The abstracted adjective Gediegene, which can mean ‘genuine’ but primarily means ‘native or pure’ as applied to unalloyed metals, is the archaic participial form of the verb gedeihen, meaning to ‘thrive’ or ‘prosper.’ This tie between Gediegene and gedeihen draws an internal relation between that which is native, and thereby genuine, and what it means to thrive. Thriving is the fulfilment of growth; growth as such completes itself in thriving. But the thriving of what? Of the native, of that which springs forth from this place. This connection sets up the second part of the sentence’s hinge: ‘wenn der Mensch gleich beides ist.’ This phrase, which we will turn to shortly, introduces a condition for the thriving of the native. This condition repeats and expands on the meaning of growth presented by the opening of the sentence. Thus the movement of the sentence as a whole is from an initial articulation of the meaning of growth to the condition for the completion of essential growth in thriving. Let’s go back to the opening of this movement: What does growing mean? dass wachsen heisst: der Weite des Himmels sich öffnen und zugleich in das Dunkel der Erde wurzeln;

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growing means: to open itself to the expanse of the sky and at the same time to sink roots into the darkness of the earth;

Sich öffnen is reflexive, it is a self-opening. Wurzeln means to be rooted in, and thus the motion of sinking roots into. Growing is a double movement – opening to and rooting in – directed to double destinations – the expanse of the sky and the darkness of the earth – taking place ‘at the same time.’ But this movement is not sufficient for the articulation of the thriving of the native. The initial movement of growth fulfils itself in another double movement: bereit dem Anspruch des höchsten Himmels und aufgehoben im Schutz der tragenden Erde. ready for the claim of highest heaven and kept safe in the protection of the bearing earth.

The first sense of self-opening becomes the kind of readiness that is open to responding to a claim addressed to it not simply from the expanse of the sky, but from ‘highest heaven.’ The first sense of ‘rooting in’ becomes a safekeeping, a being sheltered within the protection of not just the dark earth, but the earth that bears or sustains. What calls for this development? The thriving of the native demands that being human be in a certain way in order to complete the initial double movement of growing in the double movement just described. To understand the way being human must be, we must consider the second part of the sentence’s hinge: alles Gediegene nur gedeiht, wenn der Mensch gleich recht beides ist: bereit dem Anspruch des höchsten Himmels und aufgehoben im Schutz der tragenden Erde. all that is native only thrives, when human being is at the same time right by both: ready for the claim of highest heaven and kept safe in the protection of the bearing earth. (my emphasis)

Wenn can be translated as either ‘if’ or ‘when,’ but ‘when’ gives the sense of condition a temporal element. Gleich takes up the previous zugleich, meaning ‘at the same time.’ This leaves ‘recht beides ist.’ Thomas Sheehan translates it as ‘is both in right measure.’ Now of course there is no ‘measure’ in the German, and recht here would normally be taken

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as simply emphasizing the ‘is both’ (as in ‘really is both’). But we know that Heidegger often has some notion of ‘measure’ in mind when he is talking about earth and sky. Thus in ‘… Poetically Man Dwells …,’ measure is to be found in the meting out of the ‘dimension’ that spans earth and sky (PLT 220). To be ‘both in right measure’ would then indicate the meting out of this dimension. But what does this mean? In place of ‘both in right measure,’ consider translating recht beides ist as ‘right by both.’ This can be read ‘right by way of both’ or ‘right next to both.’ ‘Right by way of’ brings human being into the double movement of readiness and safekeeping; ‘right next to both’ places that movement alongside the dimension spanning earth and sky in a place that could be right by both. A meeting place. And here I want to shift emphasis from the spatial sense of a measure that spans earth and sky to the temporal sense of the measure of a rhythm. The force of the repeated ‘at the same time’ of the double movements of growth and thriving is not just to mark some kind of simultaneity or co-presence, but to mark the measured rhythm of a kind of use. Thus for human being ‘at the same time to be right by both’ is to come to that place in which one can be meted out in a rhythm of use, by which readiness for the claim of highest heaven belongs together with being kept safe in the shelter of the earth that bears. In Der Feldweg the fulfilment of growth takes place in the way one walks along a pathway to a measured rhythm and comes to the place where one can listen to the address such a measure presents. This place is the edge where the pathway greets the oak. In response the oak speaks, not to the human being, but back to the pathway itself. The long sentence we have just worked through is not addressed to anyone in particular but Immer noch sagt es die Eiche dem Feldweg, der seines Pfades sicher bei ihr vorbeikommt. Was um den Weg sein Wesen hat, sammelt er ein und trägt jedem, der auf ihm geht, das Seine zu. Again and again the oak says this to the pathway, which passes by sure of its own path. It gathers what has its coming-to-presence around its way, and bears all that go on it to what is theirs.

What has happened here? As we follow the pathway from its greeting the oak through the remembrance of childhood play to the smell and touch of the oakwood, it would seem as if the shift in thought by which such smell and touch turn to the meaning of growth would en-

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tail that when the oak speaks it speaks to someone, or at least to that being human that has just been named essential for the thriving of growth. But instead Heidegger has the oak address its manifestation of growth to the pathway itself as it passes by the oak sure of the trail that it draws through the land. Why? Precisely because it is the pathway that unfolds the trail for someone to walk and that thereby reveals the place of greeting the oak. What is the relation between human being and the pathway? Are they the same? In ‘… Poetically Man Dwells …’ Heidegger says of the same: ‘The same … is the gathering together of what differs, through a gathering by way of the difference. We can only say “the same” if we think difference. It is in the carrying out and settling of differences that the gathering nature of sameness comes to light … The same gathers what is distinct into an original being-at-one’ (ibid., 218–19). What, then, is the difference between being human and the pathway that can gather the two into an ‘original being-at-one’? I do not have a confident answer to this question. But I have a sense for how the difference between being human and the pathway has to be carried out and settled, if ‘carried out and settled’ means to undergo, to go through to the limit encountered at a place one could stay, settle, dwell. My sense is that for Heidegger the Feldweg offers the invitation of such a place. It unfolds right by you, and you walk it as the kind of being that is carried through and settled right by the Feldweg. My suspicion is that the difference which sustains this circle spans the gap between earth and sky and can only be stood next to – alongside and other, ecstatically abiding – by way of the double gesture of a mortal that opens her hands towards the expanse of the sky and folds her hands acknowledging the unutterable indifference of the earth. The doubleness of such a gesture marks its being haunted, standing there at the edge of that gap, by death that withdraws into fecund chaos. But a human being is not the source of such a gesture. Its source comes upon one as a rhythm of use by which the thriving of life calls for the thriving of the human as mortal, which, in turn, calls for the meeting of life and death at the mete place within that rhythm of use. The question Heidegger asks is whether mortals can abide within this circle, abide right by it as it addresses you, as you find a mete place – a place to pause and work, the measure of a certain rhythm of use – through listening to the message the pathway offers: immer und von überall her steht um den Feldweg der Zuspruch des Selben: Das

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Einface verwahrt das Rätsel des Bleibenden und des Grossen. Unvermittelt kehrt es bei den Menschen ein und braucht doch ein langes Gedeihen. Im Unscheinbaren des immer Selben verbirgt es seinen Segen. Die Weite aller gewachsenen Dinge, die um den Feldweg verweilen, spendet Welt. Im Ungesprochenen ihrer Sprache ist, wie der alte Lese- und Lebemeister Eckehardt sagt, Gott erst Gott. always and everywhere the message of the same rests on the pathway: The simple conserves the enigma of the abiding and the great. Spontaneously it enters men and yet needs a lengthy growth. With the unpretentiousness of the ever same it hides its blessing. The expanse of all growing things that linger around the pathway bestows world. In the unspoken in their language is, as Eckhardt, the old master of letter and life, says, God only God.

I cannot say that I know what this means – it would take more life than I have lived. Yet perhaps I can respect the strangeness of these words, and on the basis of the work done this far, still ask a single question: What place does this message name? Heidegger writes: ‘The expanse of all growing things that linger around the pathway’ (F 35). To begin to think ‘expanse’ I want to go back to the gesture by which an open hand describes the arc of the sky while being borne by the sustaining earth. It is a gesture suspended within the open breeze that is, for Heidegger, the element of the pathway, the winds of thought, which – alongside and other, ecstatically abiding – gather earth and sky by way of the dimension between them. It is a gesture that – so suspended – lingers a while between life and death. Is it also a gesture of greeting that responds to an invitation? – And here, reimagining the encounter with the oak, I want to say: ‘Yesterday, again, I came upon the noble oak.’ And I know that when I open my hand in acknowledgment of the oak there can be the bestowal of a world in the simplicity of that greeting. And I know that the enigma of what abides and is great, the noble, is then right by me as an address that demands a radical displacement, being beside oneself, ready to be taken up and taken in by the peculiar violence that renders one open for that which – alongside and other, ecstatically abiding – remains unspoken: this indifferent earth? this open breeze? this fecund chaos? God only God? – I don’t know. Would one have to be a ‘master of letter and life’ to know? But I want to see what happens to the configuration of these possibilities in turning now to the juxtaposition of the two encounters we have seen. How do these meetings belong together by way of their difference?

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Meeting Place Heidegger’s oak and Berry’s hawk are met within different rhythms of use – the difference between what it means to walk a pathway and to work a patch. When the young thinker comes to that aporetic juncture and faces the enigmas that send him off on the pathway, he is answering an invitation to a kind of solitude that is nonetheless companioned by silence, by the silent help of the pathway itself. On that walk, on coming, again, to the oak I have called ‘noble,’ he comes to that place where a dialogue unfolds between the oak and the pathway itself. Takes place right by him, alongside and other, ecstatically abiding. Listening to the message such a dialogue presents requires a fundamental act of displacement; it requires the thinker to be beside himself in the readiness for an address that will always happen as other, as next-to. Such readiness is fundamentally mortal, a mortality given by way of the bestowal of a world – a gift – exposed in that transposition of thought by which the unspoken in the language of all growing things can simply be there, in the words of a ‘master of letter and life,’ as ‘God only God.’ The movement of the meeting with the oak comes to its unspoken dimension in these words that displace the human to determine its essence. The thinker stands right by the meeting of oak and pathway, and resolutely open is ready for that transposition by which such words as ‘God only God’ can begin to make sense. For Heidegger, the ‘earth’ takes its meaning from the possibility of the words ‘God only God’ finding their proper measure, their mete place. That is the meaning of Heidegger’s translation of the Heraclitean fragment ethos anthropoi daimon: ‘The (familiar) abode is for being human the open region for the presencing of the god (the unfamiliar one).’ Ethos in Greek means ‘the native place,’ the place to which animals return when they are freed of their bond to humanity and are allowed to return home. It occurs in The Iliad as a simile for the way Apollo breathes new life into Hector when he has been injured on the battlefield. His strength returns with Apollo’s breath as a horse when freed of its manger returns in the wild fury of its heart to the pasture that is its ethos. Heidegger translates daimon as ‘the god,’ and then parenthetically as des Un-geheuren, the un-familiar, the edgy suspension of the familiar. Man’s ethos is that place in which he can dwell open to the address of the configuration of that which is disturbingly un-familiar, alongside and other, ecstatically abiding: this open silence? this fecund

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chaos? God only God? What – if anything– makes a human place native? What would it mean here to be reminded that the earth too is a god, the oldest, the longest suffering? Let me turn to Berry. Berry’s horses are teamed with him in working a patch. It is the rhythm of that use that is interrupted by the hawk. This interruption of the wild defines the patch as a patch, gives its margins their meaning by exposing the compass of the labour of this place: suddenly there is the bestowal of a world. Berry stops that labour to turn to the hawk’s interruption as if it were an invitation. Can it be? For Heidegger an animal is an animal because it can never ‘overstep its possibility’: ‘The unnoticeable law of the earth preserves the earth in the sufficiency of the emerging and perishing of all things in the allotted sphere of the possible which everything follows, and yet nothing knows. The birch tree never oversteps its possibility. The colony of bees dwell in its possibility.’5 The ‘overstepping of possibility’ is reserved for that being who is capable of death, Da-sein as the possible–impossible. The hawk that interrupts Berry’s work is, for Heidegger, not capable of death. And thus is not capable of dwelling in a world. What, then, is the force of the interruption? Merely an anthropocentric indulgence? No: For Berry it is the calling into question, the raising of the question of ethos, only here by way of the wild, of that possibly other violence, within the measure of a different rhythm of use. What is the force of that measure? What is the attunement by which the interruption of wildness sets the boundaries of a sense of place, of the work of a patch? What, again, would it mean to be reminded that the earth is also a god? I look up at the Blues, implacable, silent. Yet again, there is this invitation: What would it mean to neighbour this earth, to live right by it? And I stand there suspended by an edginess that I can acknowledge, at times, as the other side of that invitation, asking about finding words to respond to this invitation, words that fail me, that forever seem to recede in front of me back towards the shadow line of trees. I know I need a test here. I suspect it will only come with the labour of my hands. But where? Where, here, a place to pause and work? Where to find that attunement by which these words would find the fit measure in their use at this mete place? These last questions are the best clues I have towards future work. They prepare the way to clarifying what is at issue in what I have called ‘rhythm of use.’ A rhythm carries out and settles an attunement

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that takes place by way of language, indeed by way of an interplay of many different ‘languages’ and ‘voices.’ The juxtaposition of Berry and Heidegger involves the interplay of different attunements that nonetheless belong together – but how? What is the site, the place, if we can speak of one such gathering place here, of such interplay? That is future work, but a clue is present in this essay in the inflection of ‘work’ itself. Berry’s American prejudice (in a Gadamerian sense) is that the sense of things grows out of the labour of one’s hands, the labour given to them, like working a patch, or writing an essay. And if Berry seems inclined to reify the patch right by the wilderness that calls his hands to guide his team, handle his pen, then the sophisticated may indulgently smile at such naivety. But then just what is the relation between ontic and ontological in the lingering of the oak along the pathway? Do we know how to focus on that transposing turn by which in imagined remembrance Heidegger moves from the touch and smell of wood to question the meaning of growth as such? How does displacement work in such a turn? And is Berry also implicated in the work of such displacement, if bound to a different rhythm of use? Just what sense of fundamental displacement is called for to draw close to the earth, to live right by it? The demand to think the human by way of the indifferently inhuman? Or by way of wildness? Or by way of God only God? Or by the labour of these hands gathering those elements by which being human finds its mete place? – What is the test for these questions? Where is a place to pause and work them out?

NOTES 1 BT-S 12. 2 Sophocles, Antigone, trans. and ed. Andrew Brown (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1987), 49. 3 Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco: North Point, 1987), 12–13. The following references to Berry’s work will be noted within the text. 4 Heidegger, ‘The Pathway,’ trans. Thomas F. O’Meara with revisions by Thomas J. Sheehan, in Listening 8 (1973): 32–9. Originally published as Der Feldweg (Frankfurt: Vitorrio Klosterman, 1953), and written between 1947 and 1948. 5 Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism,’ BW 231.

12 Eating Ereignis, or: Conversation on a Suburban Lawn ladelle m c whorter and gail stenstad

Del: Heidegger sometimes speaks of dwelling in ways that make it sound simple – just a matter of letting go of our fast-paced, competitive, technologically mediated lives and living genuinely and peacefully with the world around us. Dwelling as a way of living sounds more like a surrender and a release than a practice or a discipline. But when you really think about it, it isn’t simple at all. One day in the late spring of 2005, I found myself standing at the edge of a university quadrangle on a beautiful afternoon. The scene before me was predictable, at least for anybody who has ever been on a university quad on a beautiful afternoon. Sunbathing undergraduates laughed and talked, munching snacks from nearby vending machines; squirrels darted to and fro foraging for acorns; busy birds pecked at fat red worms. I had witnessed the same scene hundreds of times, but for some reason that day it raised a thought in me that hit me like a lightning bolt: we don’t know the first thing about dwelling. Surely, my thought ran, if there is a first thing to know about dwelling in a place, it is what you can and cannot eat there, what is nourishing and what is poisonous, what is compatible and incompatible with your vitality. In contrast to the birds and squirrels, we modern-day humans don’t know the first thing about dwelling. Not even the first thing. I found that thought staggering and humbling. And frightening. Not only is the food that most of us eat not a product of the land we occupy – the undergraduates’ snack food was trucked in from hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away – but we have no idea which products of the land we occupy are edible. If the trucks ever stopped coming, most of us would starve. I pondered this fact a long time. Incredibly, I thought, what I was

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suddenly seeing as a situation of precarious ignorance and potential helplessness was historically the result of human technological power, knowledge, and control. I was confronted with a kind of paradox: our knowledge has made us stupid. I was confronted with the cost of technological civilization: our mastery has made us vulnerable. This historically emergent situation is intimately connected with how we think about the world around us – our relations with and apparent separations from other beings. We think in terms of subjects of action affecting passive objects. Even when we think about animal functions like breathing, drinking, we imagine that we engage in them with some subjective deliberation.1 So we think of the air inhaled, the water swallowed, and the beings ingested as the objects of deliberate acts. The world as we conceive of it is populated by subjects and objects, and nothing else. But as so many twentieth-century thinkers have pointed out, such a dichotomized way of thinking obscures much more than it brings to light and may well poison our perceptions. As an antidote, I want to consider earthworms. An earthworm moves through the earth with its mouth wide open, eating as it goes; moving and eating are the same occurrence, so the earthworm and the earth are never separate beings. You could say that the earthworm nourishes itself by eating the earth, or you could say that the earth aerates and enriches itself by passing through the earthworm. Both statements are true. There is no clear boundary between actor and acted-upon in the relationship between earthworm and earth, despite our habit of attributing activity to the animal and passivity to the inanimate. There is radical interpenetration. Of course, the earthworm is an extreme example. Birds are less extreme. Birds do not eat everything they encounter. They are far more selective than earthworms. But they do find their food in their world, as part of their world, not as something that must be shipped in from elsewhere. So they move through their world along a circuit of interpenetration. They eat the blackberries and pass the seeds that will make more blackberries in a couple of years, which they and their fledglings will eat. No animal can be said to be connected to a place where it recognizes nothing as food, nor can it be said to belong to or inhabit a place where it cannot find enough food to support its life for at least a season. And that means that we human animals inhabit, not the land we occupy, but something larger and more abstract, such as the Global Economy. So how could we dwell on or in the land? We occupy it, and we say that it

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belongs to us, but we don’t belong to it. Inhabiting isn’t just about being present in one particular location as opposed to another, any more than dwelling in Heidegger’s sense is just about noticing the being of things and letting them be, tarrying alongside them and wishing them well, stopping to smell the roses or admire the bluebirds – things we might do now and then in the land we occupy. Inhabiting is first of all about losing the boundary between self and place to the extent that some significant interpenetration occurs – physically, as well as spiritually or psychically, for the spiritual cannot be separated from the physical. Before we can dwell, we must inhabit. Dwelling would therefore require that we cease to be human in the ways we have been human since the beginning of industrialization and modern science. It would require that we lose or forsake our insistent Cartesian and Kantian subjectivity. Gail: What you’ve said brings home on a gut level – somewhat literally in this case – the need to seriously question and think our relation to food, as well as many other things that spin off from that relation – growing, acquiring, preparing, eating, saving, preserving, and so on). For an animal that claims such power over all the other animals as well as their habitats, we – most of us – are both ignorant and helpless to an astonishing degree. Not only do we not know what, in our ‘natural’ habitat, can be eaten – how many people ever took Euell Gibbons seriously? – most of us do not know any way to acquire food other than to buy it. The old joke about the child who, when asked where her milk comes from, said ‘Food Lion,’ is not much of a joke any more. I asked the twenty or so students in an Environmental Philosophy class how many of them had ever grown any of their own food, and only one young man raised his hand. I wasn’t just surprised; I was stunned. Not even one tomato plant? Not a pot of parsley or basil on the windowsill? No. There should be no need to exhort anyone to think about our relationship to food, given what is staring at us – yet somehow there is. In the all too near future, there will be no real question ‘Do we want to change how we live?’ Depletion of fossil fuels and global warming are forcing the issue. And it may well be that what we and our descendants face is, dramatic though it may sound today, a case of ‘change or die.’ But what if we believe deeply that there is no possibility of changing because, as you put it, we do not know even the first thing? We do not know how to feed ourselves. In the mere 150 years or so that we have developed our

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dependency on earth’s petroleum reserves, most of us in the ‘developed world’ – the so-called civilized countries – have lost access to the knowledge and skills that would be needed to survive even at the most basic level. We take ready access to food for granted. Even now, when people are alarmed by high gasoline and heating-fuel prices, the only way food enters the discussion is by way of higher prices due to increased transportation costs. But modern industrial agribusiness is dependent on petrochemicals at all levels, not just in distributing end products.2 We know that we are going to die eventually anyway, one by one by one. But the death I am thinking about here is not just individual deaths, but the acceleration of the humanly caused deaths of species, to the point that our own species is also threatened with extinction. The genuinely practical question is, ‘How are we going to face this impending major shift in our way of life?’ The deeper questions concern this ‘we.’ Del: Yes. I’ve come upon some very unnerving questions about ‘we’ in the past few months. When that initial disturbing thought first settled into me – that is, given that some fairly dramatic environmental and economic changes are inevitable in my lifetime, my future is not going to resemble my present – my immediate response was something like: ‘What should we do to prepare? How should we reorganize our living to be viable under these different circumstances?’ I automatically thought in terms of ‘we.’ But then I wondered, well, who was I thinking about when I said ‘we’? Whom did I mean? Of course, in part I meant my household, my family, the people I love and feel responsible for: What should my life partner and I do to prepare to be elderly in a world with few or no social services, disrupted transportation and utilities, erratic coastal weather patterns, scarce commodities, inflated prices? For twenty years I worked hard to make sure my retirement would be comfortable and my loved ones would be provided for financially, but I realized none of that will matter if the day comes when dollars can’t be easily exchanged for food and fuel. Pragmatically, we needed to think in a whole new direction. But that really wasn’t most of what I meant when I said ‘we.’ I didn’t really mean my household. I realized that at some basic level, I operate as if I belong to a ‘we’ that transcends my family and even my circle of friends and acquaintances. It isn’t exactly a ‘community’ or a ‘society.’ Certainly it isn’t a race or a socio-economic class. It is a very vague, very unconceptualized ‘we,’ an assumed ‘we-ness’ that just always operates

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in my living. I had to take that out and look at it for a long time. Who is that ‘we’? I started listening to how people use the term ‘we.’ I noticed that people often use it when talking about their favourite sports teams (‘we won!’), even when they are in no way connected to the team except as a spectator. I also noticed that I and others use the term when talking about national policy and government action. My partner’s elevenyear-old godson Keefer recently said to me, ‘I think the war is partly our fault, because we wanted the oil.’ ‘We’ has desires and intentions; ‘we’ acts decisively and sometimes selfishly. That child, who has played absolutely no role in international affairs, no role in formulating policy or strategy, has already learned to say ‘we’ and to feel the we-ness of himself in the ‘we.’ And so have I, to the point that I feel deeply ashamed of things ‘we’ have done, even in places I have never set foot. So, when I asked myself what should ‘we’ do in the face of environmental and economic upheaval, did I mean that ‘we’? But, no, it wasn’t the ‘we’ of teams or nations any more than it was the ‘we’ of race or class. It wasn’t a partisan ‘we,’ a ‘we’ against a ‘they.’ It was just ‘we.’ It was more like the ‘we’ of drivers on a busy street who go about their business without sideswiping each other or running over pedestrians, or like the ‘we’ of strangers in a train station who suddenly organize themselves to attend someone who falls down the stairs. It is the ‘we’ of unspoken cooperativeness that each one of us depends on every day for our very existence, whether we ever give it one second’s thought or not. People get very angry when that ‘we’ is grossly violated, angry way beyond whatever inconvenience or injury they suffer as a result of it. In the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel in Richmond in 2003, many households were without power for nearly two weeks. For some that meant no water, too, because so many people here depend on electric well pumps. It was becoming a desperate situation. So people who could afford generators went in search of ones for sale. One man – a man with some capital – went to one of those ‘big box’ hardware stores, bought all their generators, and set himself up in the parking lot to resell them for double and triple their original retail price. People were outraged, not so much because they had to pay more for their generators – people who had no interest in buying a generator were outraged – but because what he did was such a violation of that ‘we-ness’ that most of us take for granted under normal circumstances. Can’t you hear your mother saying this? ‘We just don’t act that way.’ And of course we don’t. This

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ambling, naked, fangless, clawless species would have gone extinct before it ever got a toehold on this planet if human beings had had the dispositions and instincts of solitary predators. We are what they call ‘social’ animals – not sheep, not herd animals who must have a leader, but not lone predators like grizzly bears either. We are social animals, animals capable of leaderless cooperation; in fact, our evolution as a species has been predicated on our basic disposition to mirror, respond to, and cooperate with one another; it depends on our fundamental ‘we-ness.’ This ability to organize without an ‘alpha,’ without a ‘natural’ leader, this fundamental cooperativeness, this unspoken ‘we-ness,’ comes out of our most basic animality. It is, literally, how we human beings move through the world. I said this was an unnerving line of thought, and that is because, once I articulated it – this ‘we-ness’ – I became frightened for it, frightened for our most basic animality in the face of what impends. I believe this ‘we-ness’ has been under assault for a long time. It has been under assault with the development and expansion of capitalist competition, with social Darwinist and eugenicist commitment to the ideal of survival of the fittest (narrowly conceived), and with the rise of racism over the past two centuries. Many of our so-called leaders these days embody those attitudes and life ways. They may call it ‘self-reliance’ or ‘family values,’ but what they mean is, ‘I am not akin to you. I am a more or less solitary predator; I and mine will survive, at the expense of you and yours if need be.’ I don’t think our most powerful politicians are acquainted with their animality. I don’t think most of the men who run the huge corporations on the backs of the world’s poor, who build the weapons and deploy the armies to secure the world’s resources for private gain, who dump billions of tons of toxins into the biosphere year after year – I don’t think those men experience the ‘we,’ except as an exploitable weakness in labourers and consumers and as something that can be perverted into partisanship and nationalism. I am afraid that, as a result of the multiple-century assault on our basic animality, our ‘we-ness’ is dying. If the world has passed the peak of global oil production, as some analysts are suggesting now, it is only a matter of years until the global economy destabilizes and global food production declines and supply lines fail. If the polar ice caps and glaciers melt, as many are predicting, it is only a matter of decades – maybe less – until our coastlines will be uninhabitable. People will be displaced, dispossessed, and desperate. And I worry, not whether Homo sapiens will carry on or even so much

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whether I and my loved ones will make it through, but I worry and wonder whether ‘we’ will survive. Will our fundamental animality reemerge and enable us to reinhabit the land? Or has it been so severely disabled that this final assault will extinguish it completely? I don’t know. I said this line of thinking unnerved me, but that is not quite right. The feeling I have here is not so much anxiety or fear as it is, I think, a kind of incipient grief. But what do you think? Can you help me think more about this ‘we’? As you ponder all this, who emerges for you in ‘we’? Gail: The first thing that emerges is yet another question: What are ‘we,’ really, we who have come to this pass? If we have learned anything from Heidegger, it is that a deep question of this sort calls for very careful thinking. That is, the usual essentializing answer – a definition – would be far off the mark, or at best serve as an in-question starting point. We could begin with ‘we are human,’ but what is that? For more than three thousand years Western humanity has used that word to evoke our distinct separateness from animals and animality. Yet in your careful thinking of this ‘we,’ you have quite rightly referred to it as resting on the basic animality of relatively weak but clever social animals. So it would be absurd to think, here, of animality as counter to humanity. And though Heidegger’s own thinking was certainly not moving in this direction, it would not be wrong to say that the Mitsein of Dasein in Being and Time is another way to evoke this evolved ‘weness,’ at least in part. So: our basic animality, giving rise to this fundamental ‘we-ness,’ is one of the things that makes us human. Thus, our insistent sense of separateness from and superiority to animalkind is literally killing them, and it is also destroying ‘us’ even before possibly killing us. You are on the right track in opening up the issue, a bit earlier, of softening our boundaries, of allowing and heeding interpenetration. Already in Being and Time Heidegger emphasized that the ‘being’ – the Sein – of Dasein is the ‘t\here’ (Da), which is none other than openness. What does that say? This ‘t\here’ is not so much a locational here or there, but is our situation in the dynamic nets of disclosive relationality. When Heidegger says that ‘Dasein is its disclosedness,’ this is not the narrow self-disclosure of a modern subject, but evokes the entire context of disclosing and concealing (GA 2:177, 463–4/BT-M 171, 401–2; and many other places in BT). Heidegger emphasizes this even more strongly in Contributions to Philosophy (from Enowning). ‘The t\here

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is the open between that lights up and shelters – between earth and world … and thus the site for the most intimate belongingness’ (GA 65:331–2/CP 226). Intimate belongingness. Our situation as the opening between earth and world is not some big, vacuous abstraction. In what Heidegger calls the thinking of the first and other beginning of Western philosophy, Dasein undergoes radical transformation as the notion of ‘being’ becomes more and more tenuous and optional and Dasein is shifted to Dasein and beyond. But this is not the place to go into those being-historical matters. Intimate belongingness. Certainly eating is, whether one stops to think about it or not, an intimate act. And since the open mouth that comes with eating is, after all, a very necessary opening to interpenetration by our fellow living beings, perhaps we should back up for a moment and scale down this question from ‘what are we?’ to ‘what are we in relation to food?’ and/or ‘how are we, in relation to food?’ Del: I can tell you how I found myself in relation to food after that experience on the quad. For the next few weeks, I searched for anything I could find on ‘wild’ food. I found some field guides at Barnes & Noble, but they were very general, not specific to this geographical region and climate, so I could only glean a few ideas from them. Next I looked up the old Foxfire books from the 1970s, which are collections of high school kids’ interviews with elderly people about ‘folkways’ in northern Georgia and the Tennessee and Carolina mountains, places not too removed from my locale in central Virginia. From these books I learned a good bit more about what people around here did in fact eat three or four generations ago – poor people, isolated people – and how they made do without refrigerators and Tupperware. I also visited a reconstructed Monacan village in western Virginia, where I learned a few more tidbits. Gathering all I had together, I searched the Internet, plugging in names of various ‘wild’ foods, hoping to learn more about them and about how to prepare them for eating and preserving. To my dismay and astonishment, all the websites that gave tips on identifying and locating these plants went on immediately to tell how to exterminate them. According to universities and state-run agricultural extension services, they were menacing weeds, a threat to our – can you believe this? – our food supply. Gail: This raises another big issue – the nature and control of what is called ‘our’ food supply – and from where or what or whom is it really

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threatened? So we are, as you say, told that weeds are a threat. Exterminating weeds is most often done how? Using Roundup, Monsanto’s spin-off from Agent Orange. When the Vietnam War ended, Monsanto was about to lose the major customer for their most profitable product. So they turned it into something that could be promoted for, at first, agricultural use, and then for home lawn and garden use. That led eventually to the first genetically engineered crops, such as Roundup-ready soybeans, as well as corn and potatoes and canola. There are now even genetically engineered animal ‘crops,’ such as farmed Atlantic salmon. Just a few of the documented consequences of genetically engineered food crops are antibiotic resistance, due to the technology used to track and verify the insertion of genes from one species into another; increased use of toxic pesticides; genetic drift – that is, biological pollution, the spread of the engineered genetics into adjacent fields or populations; and superweeds and superpests. Monsanto, Novartis, ConAgra, DuPont, and a few other huge multinational corporations are trying not only to force the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, but also to control the spread of information by resisting the labelling of foods that contain genetically engineered material. Now that the patenting of life forms is legal, some of these corporations are trying to patent the ancient foods of traditional peoples, such as basmati rice (India) and quinoa (South America). Since nearly 1.4 billion people in the less-developed world depend on their own saved seeds, it is a good thing that the governments of India, Peru, and other countries have so far resisted the most blatant attempts of multinational corporations to take control of traditional foods. And that is not all that is taking place. There have been several megamergers among seed-producing companies, biotech companies, chemical companies, and food producers and distributors, and that has led to a rather startling concentration of control over ‘our food supply.’ Not to belabour the point, but here are just a few readily available statistics (as of 2002): ‘Forty percent of U.S. vegetable seeds come from a single source. The top five vegetable seed companies control 75 percent of the global vegetable seed market. DuPont and Monsanto together control 73 percent of the U.S. seed corn market. Just four companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow) control at least 47 percent of the commercial soybean seed market.’3 So, the remaining peoples who do possess subsistence skills are facing tremendous pressures, partly from governments but largely from multinational corporations, to adapt to market economies – that is,

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money economies. For these multinational corporations, that oft-used word ‘globalization’ means controlling the world’s food and water supply, all the way from breeding – or patenting – food plants and animals, whether by traditional means or through genetically engineering them, and on to controlling their cultivation, including selling the means to control ‘pests’ and ‘weeds’ – which, as you point out, are often traditional edibles – right down to selling the results. Now that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest employer, has also entered the food chain to take control of the distribution and sale of food using their own verticalcontrol model, it is not in the least an exaggeration to say that it is a very real possibility that a few large corporations could indeed take global control of food. The water supply is also coming under some of the same pressures, but we have no space to open up that topic here. Wendell Berry talks about corporate agribusiness of a relatively lower-tech kind as bringing about the ‘unsettling of America.’ We are here looking at such unsettling – non-dwelling – as a truly global phenomenon. Our localized ignorance and helplessness is only the merest hint of immense sociopolitical structures and their movements. Del: I want to go back to the joke about the child who thinks her milk comes from Food Lion. You said it isn’t a funny joke any more because it isn’t just inexperienced children who think that way: in most people’s minds, food just is something you buy. When you made that comment I immediately thought, ‘or something you steal.’ And what that means – both the buying and the stealing – is that food is something somebody always already owns, holds legitimate title to, and can regulate – and perhaps deny – access to. The issue with Monsanto and ConAgra and others is not that they are changing the status of our food – turning it into property that can be owned and circulated for profit in a market economy – but that they are monopolizing it. As frightening as that prospect is – and it truly is – what strikes me as more upsetting is that we think of food fundamentally as property in the first place. And we think of living things that are not owned as not food. Gail: One might think of hunted meat as an exception or counter-example. However, those who depend on hunting for food are few if any in our society, and elsewhere they are the very peoples whose subsistence way of life is under threat. Even the ‘wild’ animals that are hunted, killed, and then – perhaps – also eaten have quite often been placed under the ownership of the wealthy on game preserves. This is part of

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what became of the lost commons in England, for example. And that word ‘game,’ which is something pursued by ‘sportsmen,’ also tells a tale. Food is not the core issue to most self-identified hunters. Fishing is much the same. Eastern Tennessee has many trout streams. For the price of a $46 fishing licence and trout stamp, you gain potential ownership of a determined number of trout per day. How do you acquire those fish? First you check the newspaper, or go online to the TWRA website, to see when Clark’s Creek or Rocky Fork or your favourite stream will be stocked. Then you go there on the specified day to catch your hatchery-raised trout soon after they are released into the stream. Some streams, though, are designated ‘catch and release only,’ which means just what it says – making the trout non-food, by legal definition. Many of the caught and released trout end up going downstream belly-up. Otherwise you may take your legal catch of trout home, clean them, and cook them – though I have heard several trout fishermen say they don’t even like to eat trout. Del: For decades environmentalists and social critics have spoken of the disappearance of the commons, and of course they are right: commonly held woodlands and wetlands have all but disappeared, except for publicly regulated sporting areas. But there are still small patches of public commons and unowned territories all around us, most of them full of potentially nourishing living beings. It has been estimated that there are four to seven thousand homeless people living in Richmond, Virginia, where I live and work. Every week some of the local churches set up what they call ‘feedings’ in Monroe Park downtown; they give out sandwiches to hundreds of homeless people.4 I don’t mean in any way to criticize that effort to relieve suffering, but it has struck me on more than one occasion that nobody involved in that effort realizes that Monroe Park – like virtually every other not quite manicured outdoor space, including cracked sidewalks, avenue medians, and municipal construction sites – is teeming with ‘wild’ food: curly dock, sheep sorrel, wild plantain, lamb’s quarters, dandelion, wild strawberries. And more could be added: fruit and nut trees and so on. Knowledge of these facts would not save the lives and health of desperately poor people whom the capitalist system has made outcast; I don’t mean to imply any such thing. But I just can’t help but see the failure of the system not only in those people’s horrific plight but also in their ignorance of the land and the ignorance of those who try to help them. Not only is food owned in such a way that people without money or a place in the glo-

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bal economy have no legitimate access to it, but the unowned aspects of the earth’s nourishing potential have been rendered inaccessible to them as well because of the way industrial societies have named and, to coin a word, de-named readily available nourishment. It’s just not conceptualized as food. When we talk about dwelling, we’re talking first about relocating human habitation from the global economy to the land, this land wherever we physically are, and, second, about inhabiting this land thoughtfully, reflectively, with care. Those are two big steps away from where most of us are. By dwelling we mean not just reinhabiting this land, living with the land bodily and perhaps reanimating the old folkways, but doing so thoughtfully, mindfully. But where will we find the imagination to do that when as things stand now we only occupy the land as strangers, unassimilated to it? Gail: Without embodied living, thinking and dwelling don’t amount to the proverbial hill of beans. One thing that makes thinking of dwelling hard is that right now it’s about an absence. It’s a longing for dwelling, an imagining or re-membering – for some people. You can’t look at dwelling. You can’t do a phenomenology of dwelling. We can find bits and pieces of information or memory that spark our imagination and enable our thinking to go forward or deeper. You have said that we don’t know the first thing about living in this place, namely, how to feed ourselves from it. This not knowing is lived out as an ignorance that fosters helpless dependence on corporate agribusiness and the oil and chemical industries. I recently read that ‘about 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food,’ almost all of which lists ‘natural flavour’ or ‘artificial flavour’ as an ingredient. (The natural flavours are chemicals derived from more or less natural substances, such as burning sawdust, in the case of ‘smoke flavour.’) We think the food tastes good, but we aren’t even tasting the food. We are enjoying the taste of chemicals made in factories just off the New Jersey turnpike (where about two-thirds of the flavour additives are manufactured).5 And many people – in fact perhaps in our society most people – are ignorant of this ignorance, utterly unaware that there might be something important about it or that this dependence is indeed a dangerous helplessness. Even many reasonably wellinformed people may have only the illusion of possessing knowledge that gives them some control over their relationship with food. Think of all the studies published in the popular media, telling us: eat blue-

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berries for their antioxidant benefits; coffee may cause breast cancer; studies have shown that L-carnitine aids weight loss; eat more fibre to prevent colon cancer, and on and on. Food is seen as a means of internalizing self-discipline or control, deflecting responsibility to us, convincing us to fearfully scurry about buying and consuming this or that to avoid cancer or some other dire fate. Large-scale environmental pollution, or a toxic food supply, can be ignored, while we do as we are told. Del: It might be important to say something here about how some of this ignorance came about historically. For another book project I have been doing research into the early twentieth-century eugenics movement in the United States.6 As you know, that was an effort in medicine, psychiatry, and public-policy circles to eliminate groups of people who were considered burdens or biological threats to society by in some cases institutionalizing them for life and in some cases sterilizing them to eradicate their bloodlines. Most of these people were labeled ‘imbeciles’ or ‘feebleminded,’ but given the way those terms were defined, just about anybody who was poor or who violated bourgeois standards of morality could get caught up in this system. To be classified as a ‘moral imbecile,’ a person only had to give birth to a child outside of wedlock or steal food or be homeless; in other words, people were considered imbecilic because they had failed by bourgeois standards of success – and in particular, of success in the capitalist economy. In one institution in Virginia, the Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded at Lynchburg, more than eight thousand people were sterilized between 1927 and 1972.7 The purpose was public hygiene. These people were considered a threat to (capitalist) society because they could not or would not work for wages and might bring more of ‘their kind’ into the world. But looked at in relation to our topic here, one way to see this series of historical events is as an attempt to eradicate the knowledge we are talking about, the knowledge of what we can and cannot eat in this place – because within these populations of ‘hillbillies’ and ‘shiftless’ country people were people whose families lived off the land, people who knew that food was not property, people who would have passed down to their children the folkways that allowed for the possibility of human living on this land, of habitation rather than mere occupation. You could imagine that one of the things that made them a threat to society was their very knowledge of an alternative to the capitalist con-

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struction of ‘food as property.’ And, as you’ve pointed out before, this connects with the eradication of the cultures that preceded the EuroAmerican cultures of the Appalachians and Piedmont, the cultures of the people who called themselves the Mattaponi, the Nansemand, the Pamunkey, the Monacan, and so on. We know those people inhabited the land; they didn’t just occupy it. We do not know to what extent they dwelt here in Heidegger’s sense, but we know that they were assimilated to it and we know that their inhabitation was repugnant to the rising capitalist economy that eventually displaced and in the process virtually annihilated them. At least some of our ignorance, I would argue, is not accidental; at least some of it has been inflicted on us and enforced by government policy, corporate expansion, and medical science for at least the past century if not much longer than that.8 There are forces beyond our own laziness and investment in the status quo that we will have to question and challenge if we want to move beyond this ignorance. Gail: As we’ve been touching on issues regarding control in some of our discussion, Heidegger’s writing in The Question Concerning Technology keeps coming to mind. We’ve mentioned quite a few things that are examples of calculative, enframing thinking and action, all of which move towards the destructive chimera of total control. To take the step of simply noticing and beginning to come to awareness of one’s ignorance in this matter already begins to undermine ignorance by removing the ignoring. However obvious that may seem, it needs to be said, and said clearly, because of the way in which ignorance is so intricately intertwined with the matter of control. We can’t just say: ‘I will no longer be controlled’ and, like Captain Picard: ‘Make it so!’ But if we become aware that we are perhaps indeed ignorant of the first thing – feeding ourselves from our own place – as well as some of its causes and consequences, nothing stays just as it was. Now we are thinking, and noticing becomes heeding or hearing the call of the earth, plants, soil, weather, and our own bodies – of what Heidegger sometimes calls ‘the fourfold’ that gives rise to every thing. If this evokes a response ‘outside the box’ of enframing, then questioning and thinking begin to be sensitive to previously unseen nuances and to the aliveness of dynamic relationality. This emerges as an opening for thinking, inhabiting the land, dwelling. As ignoring dissipates into hearing and heeding and thinking in response to this very simple question – ‘What can I eat here?’ – a deeper

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not-knowing may arise. This not-knowing is not ignore-ance. It can only arise as ignorance begins to dissipate in the midst of questioning, heeding, responding, and staying with this opening. In Heidegger’s writing this move of opening and beginning to think is often written in relation to ordinary, everyday things, like a jug or a pair of shoes. In What Is Called Thinking? thinking begins to unfold in coming face to face with a blossoming tree, perhaps a fruit tree. What falls by the wayside in thinking, in face-to-face encounter with the tree – not some tree in general, but this tree – is the usual scientific, theoretical, instrumental attitude (WHD 16–18/WCT 41–3). What emerges is more questioning, some of which may well be wordless. In this deeper and deeper questioning, what arises? A deeper not-knowing. Del: Yes. I think I can give an example of what you are saying. In that moment on the quad I experienced my profound ignorance; I knew my ignorance, you could say. And I was appalled by it. So I feverishly began trying to overcome it by, among other things, reading ‘wild’ food field guides. In a guide I found pictures of something call dock weed, which I immediately recognized as a plant that grows in my driveway and all around the shed and compost bins and in the garden. It is a broadleaf weed with a long taproot. People see it as a real nuisance, because it is big and obtrusive and difficult to kill. If it is in a place you don’t want it to be, it is as apt to win the struggle as you are – unless you use chemical weapons of mass destruction, of course. I didn’t need to go out and look for dock to confirm its proximate existence; I already knew where at least half a dozen plants were. But I went out and looked at them anyway. It felt strange seeing something so familiar in the yard after having seen it in a book, like realizing the next-door neighbour you say hello to every day is somebody famous. ‘You’re dock,’ I said to it, as if it needed to know its name – the kind of inane but sociable comment you make to somebody you run into again after having been introduced at a cocktail party a year ago: ‘Oh, yes, you’re Larry.’ There was a familiarity and an unfamiliarity, and a kind of adjustment of perception in a new context, a new sort of getting acquainted. I stooped down and looked at the plant for a long time. But the point of knowing about ‘wild’ food was to eat it, so after a couple of days I got up the nerve to pick some dock and cook it. To my surprise, it was very good – not as good as frostbitten collards, but much better than spinach. I waited to see if I would suffer for this act of weed eating. Would I get horrible stomach cramps, muscle spasms,

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blood poisoning, a bacterial infection from the microscopic bits of dirt and insect larvae and birdshit that undoubtedly cling to anything left outside for weeks on end? It was tasty food, but it was dirty food, hillbilly food, food that ought not be food because it grew of itself outside the global economy. The day passed quietly, though, and I did not die. Since then I have harvested, cooked, and enjoyed eating dock on a regular basis. I bake it in lasagna; I boil it in soups. It’s a wonderful food, very versatile, and full of flavour and vitamins and iron. So then the question arose: Why did people ever stop eating dock and start treating it like an enemy to be vanquished? Why do people pay good money to buy grocery-store spinach shipped from hundreds of miles away when they could pay nothing and eat dock from along the driveway? Stranger yet, why do gardeners pull up dock plants in order to sow spinach seeds they buy from mail-order houses hundreds of miles away, when they could just eat the dock that’s already there? Talk about a mystery. Dock was once a staple for people in this area. It is abundant. It is easy to identify; you cannot confuse it with anything poisonous. It is easy to harvest. It is best in spring and summer, but in central Virginia you can pick it almost all year round. European peasants have eaten it for centuries, probably for millennia. The books will tell you that dock is not native to North America; it probably came over with the settlers at Jamestown – not as an invited guest but more likely as a stowaway riding in their coat hems and the bellies of their livestock. But in the four hundred years since it arrived, it has ‘naturalized.’ Well, I thought, it has certainly adapted to this region more completely than spinach. Spinach seed never germinates well, it usually requires some watering, and the heat causes it to bolt as early as late May. If you don’t wall it off or cover it, rabbits eat it before you get a chance. By contrast, dock thrives in all kinds of weather. It is a biennial that re-seeds, so germination is hardly an issue. Rabbits don’t seem to like it much. Bugs pretty much leave it alone. It doesn’t need fertilizer, though it will grow to gigantic proportions if the soil is good. As I said, it annoys landscapers and farmers because it is so very hard to kill. Listen. If we stop thinking of it as a weed and start thinking of it as a food, it doesn’t sound like a nuisance at all, does it? It sounds like the perfect crop! Well, that is, unless your make your money selling seeds, insecticides, herbicides, or fertilizer! But back to the issue of ignorance. My attempt to overcome my own ignorance of the land – to answer the question of what I can eat here –

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led me to dock, among other things. It replaced ignorance with some knowledge. But it also brought that ignorance to light in a new way, as something constructed, something enforced, something peculiar, something questionable. Why did I not know? Why do we not know? Moreover, I began to see dock not only as food instead of weed, but also as a distinct living being, a species with a history, a political history even. I developed what can only be called a sort of admiration for it, this hardy plant that roots deep and survives the winter cold and summer drought in its adopted land. And I realized that, though the dock is a relative newcomer to this continent, nestling in among plants and insects and animals and microbes whose ancestors were here long before the first human beings arrived twelve thousand years ago, it does not merely occupy an alien or indifferent space. Dock inhabits this land, just as the bluebirds and the earthworms inhabit it. It is part of a circuit of interpenetration. It is less a stranger here than I am. And this is where I think that deeper not-knowing that you speak of happens most evidently. Not only is it evident that I don’t comprehend the dock even in my identification and consumption of it – each plant’s life is a manifestation of a history and an ecological pattern that surpasses my comprehension and certainly my control – but it is also evident that there will be no comprehending of something that arises here, something I will name – inadequately – the accident of it all, the very meaninglessness of the coming-together of these lives in this place. Maybe I could say the openness, the uncontrolled-ness that allows for the ungoverned gathering of things. Gail: After hearing about your encounter with dock, I took my Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants down from the shelf and went through it. I’ve used field guides of all sorts for years, more out of an ongoing urge to learn and know what’s around me, than for any practical purpose. But this time my question was: How many of these edible plants live on my land in the Appalachian foothills of northeastern Tennessee? Adding plants that I know are edible even though they aren’t in this field guide (such as oyster mushrooms and naturalized shiso), not counting plants of marginal palatability, and leaving out most of the strictly medicinal or tea plants, I came up with eighty-three. This was much more than I expected, and no doubt there are more, since I have by no means identified everything on the land. In putting out this field guide way back in 1977, Peterson was not thinking to encourage survivalists or to promote a hippie-style back-to-the-land mentality. He says:

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Since most of us are no longer directly dependent on the land for our sustenance, we have lost the ability to discern the negative consequences of our acts … It may seem to some that a book advocating the collection and use of edible wild plants will only add to man’s depredation of his surroundings. Encouraging people to use their powers of observation to find food in the wild will increase their awareness of the natural processes. Actively searching for and then eating a plant can provide some extraordinary insights into the interlocking mosaic of life.9

As Heidegger put it: dwelling is caring for things. How on earth are we to care for things of which we are ignorant? In Building Dwelling Thinking and elsewhere, Heidegger’s examples of things to be heeded and cared for are almost all things like a barn, a bridge, a jug. But he also notes that etymologically the German words for building are closely linked to the words not just for being, but also for farming or cultivating. So the matters in the forefront of our conversation were at least in the back of his mind as he spoke of dwelling. Ironically, a weed eater is usually a gasoline-powered tool for destroying weeds. But you have become a weed eater of another kind. And I’ve been eating a few wild foods for years. With the dock we have the dandelions and chickweed, and farther back in the woods the mushrooms and hemlock tips, an old source of vitamin C after the last few weeks of winter when the potato supply might have dwindled – they also taste good. Those, and where I live at least seventy-nine more to know, and perhaps to try out. This is heeding and attending to this leaf, this branch tip, now. We’re talking about tasting, chewing, swallowing, being pleased or not. Del: What are we doing? Here, now, in this place under these circumstances and under the circumstances that are to come? Appalled at my own ignorance of the first thing – what can I eat here? – and in awareness that in the coming decades our modern human habitat, the global economy, is unlikely to support our lives, I began a search for ways of living that would be inhabiting this land, not merely occupying it, even while I must still inhabit the global economy as well for some unknown span of time. I have begun to learn and to experience the compatibility of my bodily existence with the circuits of interpenetration, with the lives in this place. And I have begun the work of cultivating this land – not forcing it to support genetically engineered crops by pouring chemicals into it or tearing up root systems that weave a mat to hold the

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soil, not imposing on it, but cultivating it. I have begun to observe and learn and feel how the lives of things here unfold, to let the beings here teach me when to pick or cut and when to leave alone, when to offer water or compost, when to withhold. What I have done and am doing is only a small step, but it is a step towards inhabiting. Even in inhabiting the land, however, there is still the very same danger that Heidegger speaks of in relation to the science and technology that gave rise to the modern world – namely, the danger of merely using, of viewing things as resources for my life rather than as the things that they are, and of forgetting the mystery of the arising and concealing that gives forth this land and these lives. This time – as we re-inhabit the land our ancestors once inhabited – this time we must also dwell. Our inhabiting must be dwelling – even if we cannot yet imagine such an existence. We will have to learn dwelling by listening, observing, and attending our lives alongside and through the other lives in this place. We will have to think the interpenetrating circuits of living as we embody and undergo them. We will have to listen to them and give them voice. But I’m having trouble finding a way to speak of all this. I’m afraid my words don’t do justice to this thought I don’t quite comprehend. Maybe you can say more, Gail, and more clearly, if there is any sense in what I’ve said. How can we begin to dwell? Gail: We discover these nurturing plants (which give us nutrition and perhaps also pleasure, nurturing us entirely – body, mind, heart), but then we turn again and learn to nurture those plants. We care for their habitats, whether woods or meadow or fencerow. Perhaps our gardens’ boundaries from ‘the wild,’ from weed and varmint, become less defined.10 Whether from the recognition of ignorance that opened this conversation or from eating weeds and volunteers or from tending gardens and fields, all can open up this movement of questioning, thinking, gathering and growing, cooking or not, eating, allowing a gradual emergence of very deep questioning, deep enough to raise the question of who or what we are as those who can do this and think it – all of which shifts us into a deeper not-knowing that is certainly not ignore-ance but rather awareness or mindfulness. Another way to say that: heeding our ignorance of the first thing – what can I eat? – allows awareness that this question isn’t quite first, after all. Who am I? What am I? What are we? Whence this eating? And this plant and its very growing? Somehow

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there’s a first thing beyond the first thing, but it’s not a thing at all. And it’s not really even beyond, or out there, or up there. How to say it? It’s arising itself. You said it so well: it is the openness, the uncontrolledness that allows for the ungoverned gathering of things. But it arises as this very turnip, onion, or morel. What does that say? We have to question further, deeper. Arising how, where, whence? And right there the controlling language, the conceptual grasping, breaks off. Here we encounter the not-knowing that is the grandmother of all not-knowings and that is radically other than ignorance. This not-knowing encounters this thing, this thinging, anything and everything. It is, as Heidegger puts it in Contributions to Philosophy (From Ereignis), Ab-grund, ‘ab-ground,’ the groundless grounding of the dynamic interplaying that we perceive as things. All these words are merely hints and pointers, evoking the namelessness from which all names emerge. Our simple question regarding the first thing needed to inhabit the land (what can I eat here?) has led us past what seemed to be first. What are we? What is this ‘we’? And what are ‘we’ doing to our earth, to our kin the plants and animals, and to one another? Why are we so ignorant of ‘first things’? These questions go beyond environmental problems, environmental ethics, and even environmental philosophy, to that groundless arising that Heidegger calls, most simply, thinging. This thinging of things he also calls Ereignis, enowning. Enowning is mutual interpenetration, as we and things come to our own along lively circuits of relationality. And as I think and say this, I am reminded that Heidegger closely links enowning with saying, which is the showing of what arises, whether spoken or not (GA 12:244–51/WL 124–31). Eating this soup of dock, mountain mint, and rice is an action that says we belong here, that we intend to learn to inhabit this place and dwell here. Tasting, seeing, hearing, thinking, always and never the same, bringing us into our own, beyond prediction or control. Eating, we are eaten, digested, and transformed to dwell here, where we already and always are.

NOTES 1 In this conversation we were not directly engaged with problematizing the notions of ‘human’ or ‘animal’; we simply used the ordinary, everyday meaning of the words, along with a certain background understanding of evolution. For more detailed discussions of some of the issues concerning

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Heidegger’s and others’ thinking regarding animals and animality, see the papers by Skocz and Turner in this volume. For a basic overview of these and related issues, see Andrew Kimbrell, ed., The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture (Washington: Island, 2002). This book also has an extensive listing of both print and institutional sources of more information. Kimbrell, The Fatal Harvest Reader, 244. See also 148–60, 240–63. Some months after this dialogue took place, this project was discontinued in Richmond by order of the Health Department. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 122–8. Ladelle McWhorter, Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). One source for this information is the documentary The Lynchburg Story: Eugenic Sterilization in America, directed by Stephen Trombley and produced by Bruce Eadie, Worldview Pictures. The Colony is also discussed in some depth in Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity (New York: Knopf, 2006), esp. chs. 3 and 4. For a solidly documented overview of the deliberate, systematic genocide inflicted on Native American peoples, see James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America (New York: Grove, 1998); and Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York: Henry Holt, 1970). For a fascinating account of how women were placed in an ongoing double-bind of imputed self-control and responsibility along with the imputation of passive helplessness, see Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Doubleday, 1978). Lee Allen Peterson, A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 11. See also an extended discussion of the interplay of gardening, cooking, thinking, and dwelling in Gail Stenstad, Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 138–45.

13 Down-to-Earth Mystery gail stenstad

The time of ‘systems’ is over. The time of re-building the essential shaping of beings has not yet arrived. In the meantime, in crossing to the other beginning, philosophy has to have achieved one crucial thing: the grounding enopening of the free-play of time-space as the truth of be-ing. How is this one thing to be accomplished? (CP 4/GA 65:5)

And why, indeed, should anyone care whether it is accomplished? This essay responds to those two questions by bringing the matter down to earth, down to what Heidegger at times calls ‘the simple’ – which is also deeply mysterious, as we begin to think it. And it is thinking that is the key, if we are to turn away from the attitudes and actions that foster the accelerating destruction of both earth and world, and turn to engaging with things and with one another as dwellers on this earth, as those who can open to and abide and even take delight in the mystery of things. What I will take up here is the task of placing thinking, as we find it opened up for us in Heidegger, into play with the everyday practical concern of those who care about what is happening to our earth. The question underlying my concern is this: How can we think so as to be empowered in a situation that seems to render us helpless? As I reflected on this, my old (1988) paper ‘An-archic Thinking’ came to mind, as suggesting a way to move in that direction. This was a contribution to feminist philosophy, motivated by (1) wanting to hear and include the concerns of non-academics (poor women, ‘Third World’ women, women of colour, etc.) and (2) my conviction that theory-oriented infighting among feminist philosophers was counterproductive. My starting assumption was that effective action did not

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require that we agree theoretically, and did require inclusiveness of all relevant concerns, whether or not they meshed with some theory or another. I sketched out a way of thinking that, motivated by heartfelt concerns, would always stay dynamic (or as Heidegger says, remain ‘on the way’), through persistence in questioning, working and playing with ambiguities and tensions, and allowing and in fact engaging with the deeply mysterious or self-hiding aspects of what calls for thinking.1 In that early paper, I also gave some thought to ‘earth’ in a verbal sense: earth as sheltering-concealing that, when taken as image and inspiration for thinking, undermines analytic, instrumental rationality and its aim – control of the objects of its reasoning and theorizing. I also drew on Heidegger in a rather ecofeminist way. As I said in that paper, ‘Heidegger has pointed out that the continuation of the dominance of technocratic thinking (thinking that sees all things as resources to be technically manipulated) demands univocity,’ which – as Heidegger himself said – appears as ‘an all-sidedness which … is masked so as to look harmless and natural, swallowing up all resistance or difference under the rubric of “objective reality”’ (WCT 26, 34). Though Heidegger inspired that attempt at developing an-archic thinking, the context did not allow for much depth of explanation as to why that was so. Having worked with Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), I am moved now to reconsider an-archic thinking and its place in our current situation. The way of thinking towards which Heidegger again points us is in fact an-archic. In brief – with more detailed explanation to follow – once one thinks with Heidegger all the way through Contributions, the hold of the notion of ‘being,’ by whatever name, collapses. ‘Being’ is seen to have been constructed in response to wonder at beings, conceived and set up as a being that grounds their being (CP 335–6/GA 65:477).2 This gave rise to metaphysical philosophy and the patterns of thought grounded on the basic idea of being conceived as ground. Instead of resting on this ground, thinking moves into ab-ground (Abgrund), which is the dynamic staying-away of ground. Especially from Aristotle forward, being, arch•, and telos go together. When being comes into question and then falls away (loses its sway over thinking), so do arch• and telos. This leaves no arch• (unshakeable first principle) and no telos (final aim) for thinking or other actions. The result is not chaos nor ‘anything goes,’ but an opening for the possibility of thinking that emerges from and in response to patterns of timing–spacing– thinging, patterns within which we find ourselves already. This is a

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very brief sketch, and I will return to more in-depth discussion of the ab-ground – and hence an-archic – nature of the thinking of be-ing and thinging later. Thinking without ground (an-archic thinking) requires what Heidegger, in one of his most accessible essays, called ‘releasement toward things’ and ‘openness to mystery.’ In ‘Memorial Address,’ releasement towards things is discussed as being able to take or leave the products and methods of technology. Taking this to a deeper level would also mean being able to release any old assumptions and patterns of thought, including dualism, reification, and other philosophically endorsed, culturally embedded assumptions about ‘good thinking.’ Dualisms that become optional, questionable, and that perhaps call for outright rejection, include these: subject–object, culture–nature, human–environment, mind–body. It needs to be clear that when I advocate abandoning dualistic thinking, this does not result in some kind of bland ‘merging’ or fuzzy inability to make distinctions. What it does is set aside metaphysical and epistemological categories that thwart our capacity to heed what is actually happening, thus enabling us to respond fluidly and appropriately, having ‘renounced the claim to a binding doctrine’ (PLT 185/GA 7:186). One also has to take a hard look at the reifications that serve as the basis for those dualisms, fostering other dualistic fixations (territorial defensiveness and its variations): self, other, nature, human, mind, reason, and so on. Related philosophical assumptions about what constitutes good thinking include the rules of logic, arguing, the very notion of proof, objectivity, and so forth. I am not saying that these concepts are somehow bad or useless, or never to be used, any more than I would suggest that we quit using the word ‘being’ upon the collapse of metaphysics. But it is crucial that these ruling notions become questionable, that it be seen that they are optional, that they no longer need serve as touchstones for all our thinking. This in turn enables openness that allows response in word and act. Releasement towards things in this sense (releasing being-bound standards, releasement towards things and their thinging) is already openly engaged with their ‘mystery.’ Certainly, as I will discuss later, the ab-ground that is be-ing, the enowning of things, is mysterious. But even a turnip is deeply mysterious, never mind a gazelle or the rainforest or any species you care to name, embedded in any ecosystem you can think of. None is reducible to concepts, fully encompassable in theory, or – and this is utterly crucial – subject to total human control. Why should environmental philosophers and others who care about

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the earth be open to the possibility of thinking an-archically? An-archic thinking is neither anarchism nor environmentalism, nor any –ism whatsoever. As such, this atheoretical thinking may well help us break out of or move through our philosophizing, think the earth anew, and reinhabit it. It provides a different kind of context for engaging with environmental issues in terms of social or political action, without being trapped within the parameters of ‘ethics’ or ‘politics,’ which have tended to just add more layers of attempted control – the very last thing we need. Furthermore, we are on the defensive at present, even under attack at times, or at best, ignored while much that we care about is being destroyed, perhaps irretrievably. The last thing we need to be doing is arguing with one another over the ‘best theory.’ When I look at the texts I use in Environmental Philosophy classes, I see a trend that shows that many of us are already less combative and more open and inclusive than in the past. Social ecologists are noting their affinities with ecofeminism, and ecofeminists are exploring the kinship they find with aspects of the land ethic and deep ecology. Furthermore, where there is serious criticism of other approaches, it is quite often the case that what they are criticizing is where someone has been overly narrow or exclusive in their thinking.3 So there is in current environmental philosophy a rather odd tension at work between defending one’s own theoretical clan or territory, and an emerging hunch that such defensive exclusiveness is not the way to go. How can anarchic thinking help us work through this tension? Here is one way to respond to that question. Anarchic thinking doesn’t cancel or ‘falsify’ the various theoretical approaches; rather, it makes a space within which they can make their own contribution of insights. It is not necessary for us to rigidly set up and choose from opposed categories: thinking or theory, thinking or analysis. We can and should make use of insights that emerge from other modes of thought, without being stuck within any analytic or theoretical framework. Upaya is perhaps a useful concept here. Upaya is a Mahayana Buddhist notion, often translated as ‘skilful means.’ It is applied to both teachings and practices, whereby there are many different modes of both, to connect to and benefit many different kinds of people and their situations. It is sometimes said that there are as many as 84,000 true teachings and their practices. On the surface, some of them do not seem all that compatible, though they all aim at removing hindrances that prevent enlightenment (realizing Buddha nature, eliminating causes of needless suffering, fostering joy).

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The role of skilful means, upaya, is to gather up and make use of whatever concepts, symbols, and practices will move in that direction. Upaya is closely linked to the idea of ‘two truths,’ which are sometimes called relative truth and absolute truth. The notion of absolute truth, here, does not mean what it would most likely be taken to mean in Western philosophy – that is, something a priori true, ‘true by definition,’ non-contingent (in the sense that implies that something is nonrelational). The ‘absoluteness’ of ‘absolute truth’ is to be understood in its root sense of absolvere, something ‘set free.’4 Free from what? Free from the limiting restrictions of conceptual reification. Absolute truth is absolute in its refusal to be reified or reduced to words, no matter how subtle or refined they might be. Buddha nature can be inquired into, spoken about, hinted at, partially described, but never defined, never used as an arch• from which reasoning could move to elaborate a theory that itself could be taken as bearing the weight of absolute truth. In Contributions, Heidegger says something rather similar about the thinking of be-ing, which is unconditioned but not ‘the absolute’ in the metaphysical sense, so that thinking deeply of be-ing ‘does not think up a concept but rather achieves that deliverance [Befreiung] from what is only a being’ (CP 325–6/GA 65:462–3). Any theory is necessarily only an expression of relative truth. Any set of concepts, no matter how fine, is only a pointer. It may be sound, it may be true within a particular context, or based on certain assumptions. It may, in its truth, move thinking and practice in the direction of that which cannot be fully articulated in words, or at least, in the direction of greater compassion, empathy, and joy. Whatever we theorize always reflects our limited and partial perspectives, even though they may be relatively enlightened perspectives. Bringing the linked notions of upaya and relative truth to bear on environmental philosophy, I would say that social ecology, deep ecology, ecofeminism, and the land ethic are all true. If we think of land as the ever-evolving dynamic relationality on which all living things depend, if we learn to understand it better and then act so as to preserve its integrity, beauty, and stability, not just our economic interests, it is likely that we will take better care of the earth. The land ethic is true. If we ignore the oppressions of the intrahuman world, we may perpetuate them in our attempts to ‘save the environment.’ And surely the past few years have forced us to see without blinkers the coupling of oppression and environmental devastation. Therefore, social ecology is also true. Buddhists, process philosophers, Aboriginal thinkers, ecofeminists, secular

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humanists, social ecologists, and Christian stewards can all agree that ‘present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening,’ so that ‘policies [that] affect … basic economic, technological and ideological structures’ must be changed (Points 5 and 6 of the ‘deep ecology platform’). Deep ecology is to that extent true. Brutal oppression of women and children in developing countries goes hand in hand with environmental destruction. Historically, the shift in the devaluing of women and the so-called ‘feminine’ was quite clearly linked with devaluing nature. If we are to reverse the trend towards the death of the planet, all forms of humanto-human oppression should be eliminated. Ecofeminism is true. Social ecology, deep ecology, the land ethic, and ecofeminism are all true. They all speak truth about some significant aspect of our situation with regard to one another, the earth, and other living beings. They are all well-considered expressions of relative truth. Not one of them, however, is absolutely true. This is not (cannot be!) a criticism; it simply recognizes that any theory may only express a limited and partial perspective, while at the same time allowing us to make use of the good insights of these ways of thinking. An-archic thinking makes our caring for earth and all live things a springboard to creative thinking, which is what is most needed now, if we are not going to destroy the life on and of this planet. This is not just ‘preaching to the choir’ (environmental philosophers). Anyone who cares about the earth has to start someplace. We can, right from where we are, whoever we are, unlearn (and release) hindering philosophical–theoretical fixations and learn to think, which also, along the way, releases those dualisms that are contrary to a healthy earth (and us!). According to Heidegger (almost) anyone can learn to think in this way (DT 47). This isn’t just ‘ivory tower’ philosophizing. Yes, it is for philosophers, but also for gardeners, farmers, cooks, mothers, road workers, and anyone else at all who cares. This is a crucial matter. By all the evidence currently available to us, it is a fact that environmentally necessary institutional and structural change is not going to come from the top down, from politicians, corporate CEOs, the WTO, and so on. Nor is it likely that we will persuade them to think and act differently through our theoretical brilliance, truly though we may speak. Grassroots action, whether by groups or individuals, is the only viable possibility. One by one and group by group, perhaps we can attain a critical mass that will bring about widespread transformation.

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I see this ‘critical mass’ operating somewhat like the water imagery that Lao Tzu uses for the Tao: fluid, open, ungraspable, yet relentlessly enacting transformation. Even if we could all agree on one theoretical perspective, and form one monolithic environmental movement, that would not necessarily be effective. Chuang Tzu was no doubt right, in the section of his work that Thomas Merton calls ‘Cracking the Safe,’ in which we can see the ‘strong man’ portrayed as the huge power interests that currently control the world’s political-economic structure, and the ‘safe’ as our imaginary unitary environmental movement. That strong man will simply find the ‘safe’ an easier target for plunder; seizing it will save him the time and energy of picking things up one by one and then figuring out a way to bundle them up for transport. Rigid unity – ’safe’-like solidity – is not the answer. Lao Tzu’s water (a diverse, fluid ‘critical mass’ of those who care and think and act for the earth) is more powerful and effective than Chuang Tzu’s safe.5 If we had to assume pervasive homogeneity or theoretical agreement on this grassroots level, it is hard to see how effective action could even begin. There is at present no such unanimity, and there is no basis for us (philosophers) to assume that we can or should create unanimity by telling anyone what to think or do. But we can teach thinking and its power to anyone who is motivated by care for some aspect of earth, nature, or living things. It is this caring that is already the basis (starting point) for action. Several times I have been told that groups and even individuals must have a theoretical perspective before they can take action. This isn’t even plausible, much less compelling. Take as an example the Dalhart Animal Wellness Group and Sanctuary (DAWGS). This is a no-kill animal shelter started and run by children with the help of a few adults. In 2005 they rescued more than fifteen hundred dogs and almost three hundred cats. At any one time they may have more than five hundred dogs on the premises. This gives some idea of the number of homeless animals that now have homes, owing to their hard work and care. Those children don’t have an explicitly developed theoretical perspective. Instead, they have the starfish story, which is not linked to anything like a theory; rather, it serves as an inspiration and as an expression of the attitude they choose to embrace. The story goes that hundreds of starfish were washed up on the beach, and everyone ignored them but one man, who carefully picked up starfish after starfish and placed it back in the water. Another man confronted him: ‘Why do you bother – you can only pick up a few, and most of them are going to die anyway. What you’re doing doesn’t make a significant difference.’

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The reply: ‘It makes a difference to this starfish, so it matters to me.’ The key is that the children of DAWGS care, and they care enough to do something, even with an at times rather dramatic lack of community support, as when someone broke into the shelter and killed more than a dozen puppies, or when city officials gave them six months to be off their land.6 Consider the elements of Heidegger’s descriptions of thinking that those children are already practising (without having ever heard of Heidegger, I would assume): motivated by care and concern, they are heeding the actual way that things show themselves, and carefully working out a response, a response that continues to meet challenges and changes in the situation, remaining always on the way to what must often seem like an impossible aim: no more homeless dogs and cats. They have released old and pervasive assumptions: that humans are entitled to treat animals any way they please, that humans are somehow superior to animals, that children cannot think or act contrary to the dominant trends in their society, that children are unlikely to know more than adults about anything, that individuals and small groups are helpless in the face of large-scale problems. They are open to the mystery that each dog, each cat, brings into their midst. And that openness may lead them to alter their ways of responding as new aspects of the issues and problems reveal themselves. At the very least, they show us that it is possible to begin to move towards thinking and dwelling from within a very challenging and limited context. This serves as one example that bears out what Heidegger tells us about our pervasive potential for thinking. That some still insist on the fundamental necessity of theory is indicative of the hold that traditional philosophizing has, and of the necessity of doing some careful thinking not only about why theoretical thinking does not need to precede action, but also about the obstructive and even counterproductive tendency of this ‘theoretical attitude.’ There is an interesting tension here, which is relevant to you and me right now and to any possible ‘critical mass.’ Heidegger says that thinking is, by the lights of the received standards, not ‘useful.’ I am convinced, however, that thinking is empowering and that this is part of the transformation worked by thinking. In the case of environmental concern, this empowerment-by-thinking undermines the pervasive helplessness that is inculcated in us under the current fear-driven corporate-political system, which is controlled by those who seem to care about nothing but profit and power. The assumption that a theoretical perspective must precede action simply reinforces this sense of helplessness.

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Releasing ourselves into the ‘ungrounding of thinking,’ as Heidegger calls on us to do, challenges our philosophical territoriality, which itself rests, at least in part, on fear. We need to overcome – or perhaps better said, let go of – fear as a motivation. At the very least, from this minute forward, we do not need to fear ‘being wrong,’ if we are attempting to think. We are not in competition with one another, even though academia and politics would like us to continue to operate from that basis. We can stand together as those who care about and act for the sustainability of human communities in healthy relationship with plants, animals, soils, coming from many different perspectives and responding in many different ways in our own unique contexts.7 We are as mysterious as the ‘free play of the mystery’ of things, of timing–spacing–thinging. If we can release the lurking (and misguided) fear that ab-ground is nihilistic annihilation of being and reason, we can move into an openness that cannot be manipulated by the currently powerful fearmongers who are busily destroying the earth and human lives and communities. An issue of central importance on many levels is control, from the blind urge towards total control that Heidegger sketches in both The Question Concerning Technology and Contributions to Philosophy on to its varied manifestations. The ongoing attempt to move towards total control also attempts to annihilate mystery, a word I use here to point to all that eludes conceptual, calculative grasping, measure, and control. So again and again we come back to the difficulty and necessity of remaining open to mystery in the face of enframing’s tendency to turn everything (including us) into a stockpile of controllable material awaiting use on demand. Our very capacity for mindful awareness and reflection is at stake. An-archic thinkers elude control. They neither attempt to control nor are controllable by the usual means. Why is that so? To answer that question requires moving from a discussion of the ways that ungrounded thinking may help address matters of deep concern on a practical level, to considering how the transformative power of thinking arises. After all, the critical mass I speak of might not ever emerge. It may well be that all our caring, all our thinking, and all our responsive actions may, in that arena, appear to be quite useless. Thinking, as Heidegger pointed out so many times, is indeed ‘useless’ as problem solving (which is the turf of that very limited species of thought that he calls calculative thinking). Thinking is not an instrumental activity. Neither is dwelling.

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Nevertheless we must learn to think, and to dwell as mortals on this earth. Why? Because it is who we are or can be. We are those who are pointers to what withdraws (thinkers), and who enact that thoughtful bent through caring for things (dwellers) (WCT 9–10/WHD 5–6; PLT 148–9/GA 7:150–1). Again, this is really what is at stake for us now, what is most endangered in this time and place. To be blunt: If the biological species Homo sapiens went the way of the dodo, along with the other species we are destroying, what really would be lost, in the larger universe? But if the very possibility of thinking and dwelling were to vanish, this would, I assert, be a grievous loss. Those familiar phrases from What Is Called Thinking and ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ are not just pretty ideals. They emerge in Heidegger’s writing because of the way that his early struggle with the question of the meaning of being emerges into the thinking of the first and other beginning of Western philosophy. They emerge from ab-ground, which says also: enowning of be-ing (not ‘being’). The mystery that Heidegger speaks of is inseparable from things themselves. Heidegger’s thinking starts from opening up the question of the meaning of being, and by way of many paths and trails and tracks eventually moves to the groundless grounding of things, which is their very thinging, dynamic relationality with nothing (much less Being or a being such as God) behind it. Yet there they (and we!) are. We stand t\here as the responsive clearing for sayingafter the saying or showing-forth of things and their ever-withdrawing arising. Be careful: this doesn’t go towards metaphysics, for sure, but neither does it go to the usual nihilistic contraries of reductive materialism or atheism. An-arche, yes. Nihilism, no. Nietzsche warned us about that well over one hundred years ago: nihilism and metaphysics in the form of monotheism are two sides of the same coin, so much so that he even says that monotheism is inherently nihilistic.8 Nietzsche warned that the danger in recognizing that God (any substantially existent absolute ground) is dead is to get pitched headlong into hideous chaos. That lurking fear I spoke of earlier comes creeping in through the barely open window. We must ask: How is the collapse of the plausiblity of metaphysics (‘Being is dead’) not an entry to nihilism? I said earlier that Ab-grund in Heidegger’s writing names the absence of ground or refusal of evident grounding as the notion of being loses its necessity. The contending interplay of the first and other beginning of philosophy, he says, shows ‘that the heretofore existing interpretation of beings is no longer necessary’ (CP 132/GA 65:188). Notice the

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point here. If being no longer grounds, beings appear ungrounded. Beings are no longer ‘beings’! This is one reason why Heidegger at times shifts to speaking of things and their thinging. Here, we need to inquire more deeply into the meaning of this falling away of ground, said as ab-ground. Ab-grund: abground, a-byss, the staying away of ground, and the ‘hesitant refusal’ of ground. There is no ‘ground’ that could somehow ‘stay away,’ or that we just can’t find or see or understand. There is ‘grounding,’ not in any metaphysically conceivable sense (stable, existing, being), but in that there ‘is’ non-chaotic arising, enowning, thinging. Now look at that word ‘a-byss.’ In ordinary English, it tends to suggest a gaping chasm that is bottomless, unfathomable. The Greek literally means no floor, no bottom, no ground. A-byss is neither something that could be measured, grasped, and controlled, nor could it somehow control anything. Ab-ground is un-fathomable: im-measurable. It is neither measurable (extended) nor some kind of mysterious non-extended substance. Ab-ground is not a being, but be-ing that ‘is not, and yet we cannot equate it with the nothing [nor soothe ourselves by] representing it as something encounterable’ (CP 201/GA 65:286–7). Ab-ground can perhaps be thought as source, or sourcing, but in no reifiable way. Whether we call this ab-ground, or be-ing, or enowning, it remains un-graspable, beyond concepts; this is where the ‘word breaks off.’ All of these words are hints and pointers, moving thinking in the direction of what draws us in after its withdrawing. If that were all we could say of un-grounded be-ing, we might be left with the notion that this is simply too elusive, too mysterious, to be relevantly thinkable. But ab-ground, far from being some hideously gaping chasm in space-time, or a black hole in our thinking, is a pointer to the unfathomable mystery of things themselves. Openness to mystery isn’t about something out there, someplace else. It is the mystery of this thing, each unique thing, right here and right now, as we walk this earth. This is unbounded richness. Ab-ground says not vacuous emptiness, but rather fullness, the inexhaustibility of be-ing, enowning, thinging. It evokes the ‘between’ of all things, that dynamic relationality out of which everything arises: world, earth, human, animal, plant, gods (CP 266–7, 21, 341/GA 65:379–80, 29, 484–5). Even so, the word ‘abyss’ can be a bit misleading. It tends to move our imagination in the direction of overall darkness. And I have deliberately emphasized the withdrawing, hiding, and concealing aspects of ab-ground. Mystery. But Heidegger also says a-byssal ab-ground

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as Lichtung, (the) clearing in the ‘between’ of things, in thinging, that makes way for (more) thinging. This is a way to say the opening of dynamic relationality. In the German, this clearing is also lighting, the coming-to-light or showing-forth that always takes place within the ongoing withdrawing and giving-way of be-ing, bringing each thing into its own (enowning). Be-ing, Heidegger says, is en-owning, coming to light in ‘the manifoldness of enownings,’ which is to say: thinging (CP 330–32/GA 65:470–1). We do not get caught in some (conceptually constructed) polarity of ‘light’ (clearing) or ‘dark’ (a-byss) imagery. The actuality of thinging is that it is both at once depending on how the things emerge and show themselves and how they hint and point to enowning thinging in the ways that they show themselves. And it is not only that the imagery of abyssal darkness is too limiting, so that along with it we must allow for awareness of lighting and clearing. Even the light–dark imagery must be seen as only a hint or pointer. ‘The clearing, the opening, is not only free for brightness and darkness, but also for resonance and echo, for sounding and diminishing of sound … open for everything that is present and absent’ (TB 65–6). Un-grounded clearing speaks as ‘the ringing of stillness’ within which all sound arises (WL 108/GA 12:203–4). Here we come to the nexus of all of these threads or pathways of thought. Another way that Heidegger says this clearing–lighting opening within which things arise and show themselves is as the t\here, the Da of Dasein (CP 211/GA 65:298). We are enowned to ourselves in our very awareness of the things we see, hear, touch, recall, imagine, and think. The very possibility of our sense of a ‘self’ begins here. If we can release our knowing awareness into ungrounding (which is inseparably also thinging, enowning, showing-forth, the play of light and dark, stillness and sound, revealing and concealing), then it comes to pass that ‘the t\here is the open between [Zwischen] that lights up and shelters—between earth and world, the midpoint of the strife [between the two] and thus the site for the most intimate belongingness [and] all relation to a being is transformed’ (CP 226/GA 65:322; see also CP 174–5/GA 65:247–8). We are the pointers to what withdraws, I said earlier. At the same time, we are opening for the revealing and showing-forth of things. The withdrawing and concealing, stilling and resounding, are in ongoing interplay. We are those who have the possibility to hear and heed this and to respond. By another track of thinking, we have come to the place where the deep mystery of things themselves arises and comes to meet

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us in their very ordinariness. This arising and showing forth Heidegger also calls saying, which he says is the very heart of our capacity to say anything at all, to say something after the saying of things, as those who can hear (hören) because we belong (gehören) within the clearing of showing/saying (WL 123–30/GA 12:242–50). This opens to us an unbounded richness of the ways that things say themselves. So our responsive saying-after saying must echo this, while thinking all the while remains very precise and careful, staying with opening, attending to this thing, this question, here and now. It should by now be obvious why Heidegger was so insistent that we were not to turn any of the words he used in his ongoing attempts to say this downto-earth mystery into philosophical terms, or construct a system from them. This is crucial: we must let go of our grasping attempts at control, on many levels, if we are to live up to our possibilities as those who can ‘preserve each thing … in the free play of its mystery, and do not believe that we can seize be-ing by analyzing our already firm knowledge of a thing’s properties’ (CP 196/GA 65:278–9) No word or group of words can fully say be-ing, enowning, thinging, or even a thing, neither absolutely nor provisionally (as if it could be done eventually). The words are pointers only, moving us, we who are also pointers into the mystery, onto our own paths of thinking (CP 50, 174–5, 324/GA 65:72, 247–8, 460). Two questions might arise again: Why attempt this unfamiliar responsive thinking? And how? Why? Why attempt this thinking that asks that we release ourselves into ungrounding? If we fall to either extreme of grasping and clinging to Being (by whatever name) or nihilism (in whatever form), we will very likely continue to abet the destruction of the earth, ourselves, and everyone else. So we think because we care. We respond in this way because, if Heidegger has anything to say to us at all, we can see that this is who we are. We are thinkers, we are those who care for more than just our own limited turf, we are those who can respond from within our earthy belonging to things. We are not necessarily trapped within the divided reactivity that our long history of acts conditioned by dualistic fears has fostered in us. We do not have to blindly run along the same old tracks, believing we are ‘in control,’ only to find, again and again, that we are – to use one current phrase – only ‘human resources.’ Yes, there is fear, anger, and grief as we see the ongoing destruction of plants, animals, human cultures, habitats, and ecosystems. Thinking and dwelling offer an alternative possibility, set in counterpoint with the reality of the hideous things that are taking place all around us.

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We can think, we can learn to dwell in genuine caring for things, and even if that ‘critical mass’ that turns back the engines of calculative destructiveness cannot emerge in time, we will not be passive victims. As Heidegger puts it: ‘Only then is the deepest joy freed from its ground – as the creating that by the most reticent reservedness is protected from degenerating into a sheer and insatiable driving around in blind urges’ (CP 176/GA 65:249). How? Heidegger explicitly says that there is no method (WL 75/GA 12:168). There is no single set or best way to enact thinking that moves within the mystery, caring for down-to-earth things. Some thinkers have used spatial imagery to suggest ways of thinking without being trapped in the old, control-laden modes. Wendell Berry speaks of thinking from the margins, open to the possibility of finding something previously neglected or unthought (akin to traditional Peruvian farmers’ ways of keeping wide field margins, as a space within which new potato varieties can emerge).9 Lorraine Code suggests holding to a middle ground from which place one can clearly see and work with opposing points of view, without being trapped in the usual mode of arguing them against one another.10 This reminds us of Heidegger’s comment that thinking is not about polemics, but instead always speaks for a matter. Notice that these spatial metaphors do not actually point to one place or another, a fixed starting point or aim, nor in one predetermined direction or another. What they do is to shift thinking away from its usual tracks and constraints, finding new paths. Heidegger opens this territory up as what he sometimes calls the region of thinking. Whatever we call it, for Heidegger the region of such thinking is ground-less, abground; it is our moving within and towards the pull of the mystery of thinging itself. The region is an-archic, and the thinking that arises within and that attempts to say it must also be an-archic, practising releasement towards things and openness to mystery. The point of such thinking is not to grasp anything, but to dynamically embody our deepest, fullest possibilities as the t\here for clearing, saying, and caring for the things of this earth, learning to respond in each unique moment without divided reactivity. Thinking is not as much something we do as who we are. One of the most beautiful ways Heidegger ever found to say this is in his use of the archaic word thanc, in What Is Called Thinking: The originary word ‘thanc’ is … the gathering of the … inclination with which the inmost meditation of the heart turns toward all that is in being … Its devotion is held in listening … rightly considered, the idea of an

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inner and outer world does not arise … The thanc, the heart’s core, is the gathering of all that concerns us, all that we care for, all that touches us insofar as we are, as human beings … For in giving thanks, the heart in thought recalls where it remains gathered and concentrated, because that is where it belongs. (WCT 139–45/WHD 91–5, 157–9)

Thinking emerges along with gratitude for things animate and inanimate, for other humans, and for our own capacity for awareness of our relationships with them all, each one, as our lives unfold in their midst. The thanc, the embodied heart–mind, is already open to dwelling, to caring not for ‘things’ in some vague general sense, but for each unique one (PLT 151/GA 7:153). This daylily, this bowl of kibble to be given to this dog, this book, this glass of water, this cool, shady place in the woods, this ball of yarn. Not only those. This question, these words, this silence. This openness to each unique moment of relational awareness is radically different from the human stance in the grip of enframing, and not only in our having let go of the illusory and self-destructive aim of total control. If we can think from our heart’s core rather than scrambling for a way to stay in control or to manage our things and thoughts, we will have already, at least to some extent, eluded our reduction to mere standing reserve.11 As I said earlier, thinking and dwelling neither seek to control, nor submit to being controlled (thinking and dwelling are not passive). This is the genuine empowerment that the ungrounding of thinking offers us. The power of thinking also shows up in that anyone can think, if only we actually care enough to begin, to slow down from the compulsive speediness of life within enframing, and simply begin to pay attention and let our own questions arise. One reason we are destroying the earth is that the pace of humanly caused change has (apparently) outstripped the pace of evolution. The ongoing thoughtless haste of calculative thinking is far from harmless, in and of itself. So we slow down and find ways to practise – in one way or another – releasement towards things and openness to mystery. And of the two, it is perhaps the openness that is most crucial. Open to what? Mystery. Again we come back to what is unfathomable, immeasurable, ungraspable, not reducible to concepts. In genuine openness, clinging to concepts and conceptual thinking is already somewhat released. This then enables one to release oneself towards things in their thinging, their down-to-earth mystery. Releasing and openness strengthen each other, empowering our thinking, enabling the possibilities of genuine dwelling to arise.

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In German one may say ‘mystery’ as Geheimnis. Geheimnis hints at our somehow being at home (Heim) within mystery.12 Thinking calls on us to abide mystery, to abide within mystery, in fact to delight in the possibilities that always remain open or unfinished to draw us to return to thinking, again and again. Down-to-earth mystery is the abode of thinking, and dwelling is day-to-day intimacy with mystery. It is up to us to find the ways.

NOTES 1 Gail Stenstad, ‘Anarchic Thinking,’ Hypatia: The Journal of Feminist Philosophy 3 (Summer 1988): 87–100. Several years later I again explored the relevance of this kind of thinking to feminist concerns in the paper ‘Revolutionary Thinking,’ published in Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, ed. Nancy Holland and Patricia Huntington (College Station: Penn State University Press, 2001), 334–450. There, I drew on Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), showing how its opening up of a radically atheoretical way of thinking was important for feminism. 2 This is just one of a great many places in CP that discusses or alludes to this matter. For a detailed discussion of how the notion of being in all its guises falls away in the thinking of the first and other beginning, see Gail Stenstad, Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 14–28, 41–4, 146–60. 3 A careful comparison of the first, second, and third editions of Michael Zimmerman and colleagues, Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1993, 1998, 2001), shows this trend. Ecofeminism has perhaps gone farthest in that direction, especially as presented in Karen Warren’s more recent work. See Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). Warren not only makes fruitful connections with the other modes of environmental philosophy but also transforms the notion of theory by way of her ‘quilting’ imagery. While she does not use the language of anarchic thinking, or reject the enterprise of making theories, she does reconceive theory in a way that allows for much more openness and fluidity of thought, and that cannot be encompassed by a standard arch•-telos model. 4 I owe Kenneth Maly thanks for suggesting that a look at the Latin would be helpful at this point in the discussion. 5 Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York: New Directions, 1969),

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8 9 10 11 12

Gail Stenstad 67–9. The notion that dynamic fluidity overcomes hard, strong obstructions shows up throughout the Tao Te Ching, of which there are a great many translations. Most of this information comes from letters from DAWGS. See also http:// www.dawgsntexas.com. The ‘we’ in this paragraph first of all named the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, which is where a shorter version of the ‘anarchic thinking’ part of this paper was presented in 2004, without very much of the Heidegger material. That body, constituted as a multidisciplinary, multiperspectival forum for those who share this care, is already, to that extent, on the way in the manner I am describing. I offered these thoughts as a provocation to us (IAEP) to continue this and to further radicalize our thinking, catalysing a transformative critical mass of earththinkers. I also owe a special word of thanks to Kenneth Maly for reading my paper to the IAEP meeting when a conflict prevented me from attending, and then reporting back to me with the feedback. For a similar comment by Heidegger, see CP 97/GA 65:140. Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1986), 171–91. Lorraine Code, What Can She Know: Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 321. For an extended discussion of the power of this thanc in thinking and dwelling, see Stenstad, Transformations, 119–41. In fact the link in meaning is there in the history of the word. Due to the sense that home is a private place where one retreats from public view behind closed doors, Geheimnis began to be used as a translation for mysterium from the time of Luther forward. Hermann Paul, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 8th ed. Werner Betz (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1981), 235.

Selected Works by Martin Heidegger

Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 13. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983. Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989. Contributions to Philosophy (from Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit. Gesamtausgabe, vols. 29/30. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983. Die Technik und die Kehre. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1962. Der Feldweg. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1953. Der Satz vom Grund. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1971. Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1960. Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Early Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Philosophy, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Holzwege. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977. Identität und Differenz. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1957. Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.

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An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Mannheim. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. Nietzsche, vol. 1, trans. David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word, Concerning Herder’s Treatise ‘On the Origin of Language,’ trans. Wanda Torres Gregory and Yvonne Unna. Albany: SUNY Press, 2004. On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Parmenides. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 54. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976. Pathmarks, trans. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lily. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Reden und Andere Zeugnisse Eines Lebeswebes. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 16. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. Seminare, ed. Curd Ochwaldt. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1986. Sein und Zeit. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977. Seminare. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1986. Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Unterwegs zur Sprache, 7th ed. Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1982. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 12. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985. Vorträge und Aufsätze, 8th ed. Stuttgart: Günther Neske, 1997. Vorträge und Aufsätze. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 7. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1954. Was Heißt Denken? 4th ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984. Was Ist Das – die Philosophie? Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1963. Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976. What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Zollikoner Seminare. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987. Zur Sache des Denkens. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969.

Contributors

Remmon E. Barbaza is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He earned his PhD in philosophy at the Hochschule für Philosophie in Munich, Germany. His dissertation, Heidegger and a New Possibility of Dwelling, was published in 2003 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang). His research interests include technology, language, and translation. He is currently working on interdisciplinary research projects on water sustainability and Filipino culture and identity. Steven Davis is the translator of Heidegger Memorial Lectures (Heidegger: Freiburger Universitätsvorträge zu seinem Gedenken) (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1982). He has also published articles on Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault. Thomas Davis is Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Whitman College. He is currently working on the philosophical foundations of non-violence in Heidegger, Levinas, and Cavell. Tom Greaves is lecturer in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He has research interests in environmental philosophy, German Idealism and Romanticism, and historical understanding. He is currently working on an introductory work titled Starting with Heidegger and a project tracing the roots of ecological phenomenology in post-Kantian philosophy. Kenneth Maly is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and now teaches

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Contributors

courses in environmental philosophy and environmental studies for the Centre for Environment at the University of Toronto. He is General Editor of the book series New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics for the University of Toronto Press, where his book Heidegger’s Possibility: Language, Emergence – Saying Be-ing was published in April 2008. He has edited two volumes on Heidegger and Heraclitus and has translated three books by (and one about) Heidegger, including Heidegger’s major work Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Kenneth Maly is founding co-editor of the international journal Heidegger Studies. He is founding co-editor of the journal Environmental Philosophy. In 2005 he received the 2005 University of Wisconsin Regents Teaching Excellence Award. Ladelle McWhorter holds the James Thomas Chair in Philosophy and a joint appointment as Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities Studies at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999) and Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Robert Mugerauer is a Professor in the Departments of Architecture and Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington. He is the author of Heidegger and Homecoming, Interpretations on Behalf of Place, Environmental Interpretation, and Heidegger’s Language and Thinking, and co-author of Environmental Dilemmas. Hanspeter Padrutt was born in Zurich in January 1939. He worked as a taxi driver during his time as a medical student in Vienna and Zurich; however, he has lived without a car since 1975, and in 1977 he wrote the angry pamphlet ‘The Car Pest.’ Taking ‘Die Winterreise’ by Franz Schubert and Wilhelm Müller as his starting point, the psychiatrist and psychotherapist wrote The Epochal Winter: Zeitgemäße Betrachtungen (1984), which analyses in a fundamental way the intellectual origins of the worldwide ecological crises. He later wrote Und Sie bewegt sich doch nicht: Parmenides im epochalen Winter (1991), a provocative philosophical travel journal in which he plays with the poetic fragments of pre-Socratic poet Parmenides, offering new translations and a surprising interpretation of these fragments as they pertain to technology and today’s threat to the natural world.

Contributors 257

Dennis Skocz received his PhD in philosophy from Duquesne University. His studies focus on phenomenology and contemporary continental European philosophy, with particular emphasis on Heidegger and Husserl. He has published chapters in Tensional Landscapes: The Dynamics of Boundaries and Placements; Earth Ways: Framing Geographical Meanings; Lived Topographies and Their Mediational Forces; and Ecoscapes: Geographical Patternings of Relations, as well as articles in Analecta Husserliana, Environmental Philosophy, and Philosophy in the Contemporary World. A retired career diplomat, he now serves as President of the Society for Phenomenology and Media and works as a consultant in strategic planning and professional development. Gail Stenstad is former chair of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities and Professor Emerita at East Tennessee State University. She is the author of Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). She is an associate editor of Heidegger Studies and a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy. Donald Turner teaches philosophy at Nashville State Community College. His main research areas are ethics, philosophy of religion, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental philosophy. He has published articles on Emmanuel Levinas’s theology, the ethical significance of the iPod, and questions about animal ethics in the writings of Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida.

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Index

ab-ground (Ab-grund), 28, 117, 119, 234, 237–8, 244–7, 249 abyss (a-byss, abyssal), xiii, 86, 103– 4, 114–15, 117, 119–20, 146, 147, 149, 151, 246–7 action (acting agent), ix, x, xvi, 8, 29, 32, 37, 90, 93, 132, 163, 167, 174, 176, 216, 228, 234, 236, 239, 241, 242, 243 Adorno, Theodor, 117–18 Agamben, Giorgio, 122n20 agribusiness, 218, 224, 226 agriculture, 118–19, 124, 160, 161, 176, 223, 235n2, 252n9 al•theia, 42, 72, 77, 97n30, 159 anarchic thinking, xvi, 236, 239, 251n3, 252n7 animality, xiii, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 120n3, 145, 148, 155, 163, 220–1, 235n1 animals, xiii–xiv, 24, 51, 78–9, 103– 15, 117, 118, 120, 122n25, 124–42, 144–58, 160–4, 165n18, 176, 216, 217, 221, 224, 234, 234n1, 242, 244, 246, 248 (see also organism; specific animals); encounter with, 202–5; human as, 25, 26, 34, 136, 139,

149, 156, 162, 216; language and, 103–12, 115, 130, 146–7, 155, 163; social, 220, 221; ‘world poor,’ xiii, xiv, 26, 114–15, 125, 137, 139, 144, 148–9, 156 annihilation, ix, 75, 189, 192, 196, 244 Antigone, xv, 170, 174, 183n11 ape, 34, 147, 148, 155, 163, 165n18 appropriation, 42, 87. See also enowning arch•, 107, 237, 240, 245, 251n3 architecture, 24, 70, 186, 195, 196n2 Arellano, Juan, xv, 186–7, 190–6, 196n2, 198n7 Aristotle, 25, 29, 33, 78, 84, 106, 169, 184n19, 196, 237 art, xii, xv, 67, 68, 70, 72, 75–6, 83, 96n28, 108–10, 154, 159, 178, 186–9, 192, 193, 195 as-structure, 150, 151, 155 athlete, 188 attuning, attunement, xv, 38, 53, 88–9, 91, 203, 205, 213 Bacon, Francis, 132 bee, xiv, 20, 126, 151–2, 155, 213 beetle, 127, 150

260

Index

being, 17, 23, 26–32, 40nn6 and 9, 41n11, 86, 97n30, 138, 147, 161, 170, 178, 188, 201, 237, 238, 245, 250 (see also shepherd of being); and beings, 71, 83, 87, 136, 141, 165, 188–9, 195, 237, 245; forgetfulness of, 28, 189; as ground, 85, 237, 245–6; history of, 28, 36–9; mystery of, 47, 70, 189; optional, 222, 245; withdrawal of, 72 be-ing, 236, 238, 240, 248 (see also enowning); as ab-ground, 83, 85–6, 246 beings, 77, 83, 85, 125, 136, 137, 141, 176–7, 198n8, 241, 245–6; as objects of representation, 76, 83, 89, 95; as standing reserve, 12, 159, 244; ways of revealing, 71, 72, 79 belonging (be-longing), xii, xv, 31, 41, 52, 64, 66–8, 80, 112, 170, 173, 248 between (Zwischen), 73, 79–80, 88, 116, 246–7 Bentham, Jeremy, 145–6, 147, 153, 155, 156 Bernasconi, Robert, 154 Berry, Wendell, xv, 57, 202–5, 212–14, 224, 249 Bild (Ge-bild), 130 biology, 10, 18, 19, 20, 23, 33–5, 103, 112–13, 165n9 bird, 8, 57, 79, 109, 118, 119, 122n25, 171, 215, 216, 217, 231. See also hawk Bloch, Ernst, 37 body, 5, 9, 57–9, 67–8, 103, 125, 226, 228, 232, 233, 238, 252n7 Buddhism, 39, 59, 239, 240 call, xiii, 12, 14, 22, 66, 88–91, 97n25, 158, 160, 228

calling, x, 64, 72–3, 77–8, 86, 88, 94, 119, 192, 194, 204 capitalism, 220, 225, 227–8 captivation (Benommenheit), xiv, 113, 126, 135, 137, 138, 140, 151–2, 156, 165n12 Carson, Rachel, 118 chaos, 79, 210, 211, 213, 237, 245 children (childhood), 7, 80, 107, 111, 117, 202, 206, 209, 224, 241, 242, 243 Christianity, 35, 38, 79, 92, 98, 99n58, 241 Chuang Tzu, 242 clearing, 25, 26, 64, 90, 104, 116, 117, 147, 158, 160, 179, 245, 247–9. See also Lichtung Cloudy Day, xv, 190, 193, 194 Club of Rome, 27, 32 commons, 225 community, 53, 94, 124, 218, 243, 244 comportment, 21, 22, 41n9, 138, 152, 156 computers, 5, 23, 29, 32, 36, 128, 188. See also cybernetics; information technology; Internet concealing (concealment), xii, xvi, 10–12, 15, 28, 62–7, 87, 131, 135, 147, 154, 221, 237, 246; and language, 63, 66; and revealing, xii, 10–12, 65, 80, 86–7 consumption, 9, 162, 231 control (controlling), xi, xii, xvi, 6, 8–9, 11, 15–16, 22, 36, 50, 54–5, 57, 59, 61n17, 67–8, 73, 78, 81, 84, 118, 131–2, 194–5, 216, 222, 223–4, 226–8, 231, 234, 237–9, 242, 244, 246, 248–50 cooking, 233, 235n10 corporations, 14, 220, 223–4, 241

Index critical mass, 241–4, 249, 252n7 crossing (crossing over), 105–6, 119–20, 236 cybernetics, 23, 30, 36. See also computers; information technology; Internet Da-sein (being t/here), 25–8, 30, 37–8, 40nn6 and 9, 42n11, 112–13, 136–7, 138, 140–1, 146–50, 161, 165n10, 173, 174, 177, 179, 221–2, 245, 247 Dalhart Animal Wellness Group and Sanctuary, 242–3 dark (darkness), xii, 49–50, 53, 60n3, 62–3, 65, 66, 68, 77, 110–11, 113, 117, 187, 207, 208 Darwin, Charles, 109 death (mortality), ix, xv, 20, 22, 28, 32, 50, 51, 55, 66–7, 69, 80, 177, 187, 194, 201, 210–13, 218, 220 deinon, 172–5, 178, 183nn10 and 13. See also unheimlich Derrida, Jacques, 120n2 Descartes, René, 24, 25, 29, 212 desire (eros), 48, 50, 62–5, 67, 68, 169 dik• (justice), 172, 177–8, 181 disclosure, 25, 28, 37–8, 66, 72, 79, 128, 176, 198n8, 221 distance, xv, 42, 58, 87, 116, 191–2, 197n5, 202, 204 divinities, 18, 53, 54, 55, 70, 79–81, 86–7, 90, 190, 193–4 dock, 225, 229–32, 234 dualism, xvi, 58, 60n3, 238, 248 dwelling, xi, xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 17, 18, 32, 39, 52–5, 62–7, 70, 77, 142, 161, 173, 186, 194–6, 213, 215, 217, 224, 226, 228, 232–3, 235n10, 243–5, 248–51, 252n11

261

dynamic relationality, xvi, xvii, 221, 228, 234, 240, 245–7 earth, x, xi–xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, 7, 9, 12–17, 22, 32, 45, 46–59, 61n17, 62–70, 75–6, 80–1, 83, 86, 90, 119, 127, 133, 142, 159, 161, 170, 176–7, 179, 180, 181, 192–6, 201–2, 207, 208–11, 213–14, 216, 222, 232, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240–2, 245, 246, 247, 250 (see also physis; soil; world); call of the, 66, 91, 228; as Gaia, 48, 50; as given, 73–4, 76, 77, 82, 87, 91, 92; as land, 216–17, 221, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230–4; and language, 62–4, 163; as mother, 51, 93; as spaceship, 32–3 ecofeminism, 133, 237, 239–41, 251n3 ecology, ix, xi, 17, 18–19, 21, 26, 27, 32, 34–7, 39, 109; deep, 56, 61n17, 239, 240, 241; social, 240, 241 economy, 106, 109–12, 114–15, 120, 216, 220, 224, 226–8, 230, 232 elephant, 127–8, 133, 155, 163 empowerment, xvi, 236, 243, 250 energy, 33, 46, 51, 53, 58, 78, 83, 97n25, 159, 242. See also oil enframing, 43n14, 128–9, 159, 228, 244, 250. See also Gestell enowning (Ereignis), xvi, 25, 26, 30–1, 42n11, 70, 83, 87–8, 90, 95nn1 and 3, 221, 234, 237, 238, 245–8 environment, xiv, 18, 33, 50, 61, 63, 104, 113, 119, 122n25, 123–5, 127, 130–6, 140, 142, 143n6, 155, 165n12, 176, 179, 184n24, 238, 240. See also Umgebung; Umwelt environmental management, 123, 124, 132, 134, 140, 179

262

Index

environmental philosophy, 70, 144, 234, 239, 240, 251n3, 252n7 environmentalism, 8, 9, 175, 179, 225, 239 epistemology, 27, 34, 35, 76, 77, 83, 86, 124, 130, 132, 133, 138, 142, 238 ethics, xiv, 15, 36, 61n17, 153–5, 157, 161–2, 196, 234, 239; originary, 154, 196 ethology, 125 everydayness, 74, 92–3, 136, 137, 138 evolution, 34, 35, 103, 220, 234n1, 250 extinction, 15, 123, 218, 220 farmers (farming), 161, 190, 194, 199n12, 202, 230, 232, 241, 249 fear, xii, 50, 62, 66, 132, 173, 202, 204, 221, 243, 244, 245, 248 Feldweg, 205–6, 209–11 feminism, 99n60, 236, 251, 251n1. See also ecofeminism fiduciary, xiv, 134, 136–8, 140, 142 folkways, 222, 226, 227 food, xvi, 51, 126–7, 152, 160, 161, 215–16, 217–18, 222–31 forgetfulness, 10, 11, 12, 28–32, 37, 189, 223 fourfold, 18, 22, 26, 30, 31, 41n11, 53, 54, 55, 61n17, 65, 70, 79, 80–4, 87, 90, 92, 93, 193, 228 free, 29, 53, 54, 55, 72, 109, 118, 119, 136, 138, 140, 141, 156, 160, 161, 196, 198n8, 236, 240, 244, 247, 248 freedom, xiv, 110–12, 118, 120, 137, 151, 192, 194, 198n8 freeing, xiv, 17, 54, 141 Freud, Sigmund, 29, 34, 79 game(s), 19, 37, 174, 188

gathering, 27, 29, 43nn12 and 14, 48, 49, 50, 54, 57, 59, 65, 86, 90, 210, 214, 231, 234, 249–50 Geheimnis, 162, 251, 252n12. See also mystery Geographic Information Systems (GIS), xiii, xiv, 123–5, 127–31, 133–8, 140, 142 Gestell, x, 29–32, 43n14, 70, 125, 138, 159. See also enframing gift, 71–5, 80–1, 87–91, 94, 95n2, 109, 114–15, 212 givenness, xii–xiii, 58, 71–2, 74–5, 80, 84–5, 87–91, 95n3, 97n29 God, 12, 29, 38, 79, 92, 97n29, 99n58, 111, 187, 189, 193, 211–14, 245 gods, 18, 22, 49, 51, 54, 55, 56, 59, 79, 81, 82, 83, 92–3, 99n58, 171, 172, 174, 191, 194, 201, 246. See also divinities; fourfold Grimm, Jacob, 107, 121n16 ground, 48–9, 56, 77, 83, 86, 104–6, 110, 113, 117, 119, 120, 162, 174, 194, 237, 238, 244–6, 249 grounding, xvi, 107, 108, 234, 236, 245–6 guilt, x–xi, 13–16 Gulf of Mexico, 7, 124 habitat, xiii, 128, 129, 142, 163, 196, 217, 232 habitation (inhabiting), xv, xvi, 53, 59, 70, 73, 92, 93, 94, 111–12, 113, 119, 217, 226–8, 232–3 Haeckel, Ernst, 18, 109 hawk, xv, 202–5, 212, 213 hearing (hearkening), xiii, 52, 64, 80, 115–20, 228, 231, 234 Hensel-Smith, Keefer, 219 Heraclitus, 38, 62, 212, 256

Index Herder, Johann Gottfried, xiii, 104, 106–16, 119, 120n3, 121n17 hermeneutics, 23, 71, 91 historicity, 89, 90, 105 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 17, 38, 49, 141, 142, 147, 148, 192, 193 home, xv, 18, 47, 51, 52, 91, 93, 94, 95n1, 118, 142, 173–5, 177–8, 180, 187, 199n12, 201, 212, 251, 252n12 human being, xiii, xv, 13, 31, 35, 41n9, 45, 52, 55, 57–8, 76, 79, 83, 86, 89, 92, 103–6, 108–12, 114–17, 119, 120, 121n3, 122n25, 147–8, 151–2, 154, 161, 162–4, 170–1, 181, 183n11, 188–91, 195, 207, 208, 210, 216, 220, 221, 234n1, 238, 246; Homo sapiens, 220, 225; as ‘rational animal,’ 25, 26, 34; as standing reserve, 244, 248, 250; as superior, 22–3, 132, 221, 243; and uncanniness, 169, 171–80 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 111, 120n3 hunting, 176, 203, 204, 224–5 Husserl, Edmund, 71–2, 84–5, 89, 96n15 ignorance, xvi, 12, 216, 224–33 immanence, 71, 74, 91, 92, 97n29 information technology, xii, 131–2. See also computers; cybernetics; Graphic Information Systems; Internet instinct (drive), xiii, 109, 114, 125–7, 134–5, 139, 152 Internet, 5, 128, 222 intimacy, 195, 204, 251 Jäger, Alfred, 38–9 Jeffers, Robinson, 170, 181

263

Kant, Immanuel, 10, 74, 96n15, 145, 146, 147, 150, 153, 156, 197, 198n5, 217 Lao Tzu, 242 land ethic, 239–41 language, xii, xiii, 17, 26, 27, 30, 34, 62–4, 67–8, 93, 103–11, 115, 117, 120, 121n3, 122n25, 234; as distinctly human, 81, 87, 104–6, 108, 111–12, 115, 176; of the earth, 96, 97n28; origin of, 104–9, 111, 114–16, 120, 176 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 85, 109 Leopold, Aldo, 51 Lichtung (lighting), 56, 247. See also clearing life, 5, 6, 7, 12, 19, 20, 23, 29–30, 33, 34, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 57, 58, 70, 75, 82–4, 86, 92–4, 98n58, 109, 113, 114, 126, 133, 138, 139, 146, 147, 151, 153, 162, 165n9, 177, 181, 189, 192, 210, 211, 212, 220, 232, 241, 260 life form, 19, 50, 92, 223. See also organism listening, 64, 89, 94, 104, 119, 161, 205, 210, 212, 233, 249. See also hearing logos, x, 18, 42, 169, 178 Lopez Museum, 190, 197n2, 198n7 machination, 177, 180 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 155–6 Maly, Kenneth, xi–xii, 62–7, 87, 96n43, 251n4 management, x, xiii, 7–12, 15, 16, 50, 123, 124, 132, 134, 140, 142, 179. See also environmental management maps, mapping, 123–4, 127–30, 133,

264

Index

134. See also Graphic Information Systems margins, 203–5, 213, 249 Marion, Jean-Luc, xii, 71–6, 80, 84– 94, 95nn2 and 3, 96n15, 97nn25, 28, and 29 Marx, Karl, 34, 159 meaning, 15, 55, 56, 74–7, 81, 83, 113, 131, 172, 183n12, 197n5, 205, 207; of being, 25, 35, 154, 245 measure, xv, 17, 24, 25, 31, 36, 53, 73–5, 84, 92, 122n25, 194, 197n5, 208–9, 210, 212, 213, 244 medicine, 19, 20, 51, 227 memory, xv, 68, 119, 142, 180, 202, 205–6, 209, 214, 226 Merchant, Carolyn, 132–3 metaphysics, x, xiii, 54, 83–4, 86, 91, 104–8, 238, 245 method (methodology), 24, 131, 137, 249 middle ground, 33, 60n3, 116, 249 mind, 36, 58, 187, 191, 233, 238, 250. See also dualism mortals, 18, 59, 67, 154, 169, 194, 210. See also fourfold mystery, xvi–xvii, 10–12, 15, 26, 47, 53, 54, 68, 70, 80, 90, 144, 162, 189, 233, 236, 238, 243–51; openness to, xvi, 162, 238, 246, 249, 250 Native American, 56, 222, 228, 235n8 natural resources, 7, 8, 9, 123, 159, 170, 179 nature, x, xv, 18, 20, 22, 24, 29, 33, 34, 36, 42, 47, 49, 61n17, 63, 75–7, 82, 95, 103, 109, 114–20, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 142, 156, 160, 189, 193, 238, 242

nearness, xv, 65, 103, 161, 191–2, 194–5, 197n5 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xvii, 29, 31, 34, 38, 105, 147, 159, 169, 195, 245 nihilism, 189, 245, 248 not-knowing, 229, 231, 233–4 nothing, the, xv, 186–90, 195, 197n3, 246 object, 27, 36, 42n11, 71, 72, 74, 76, 88–9, 97n25, 238 objectivity, xvi, 28, 74, 238 oil, 7, 9, 14, 15, 219, 220, 226, 228 ontological difference, 87, 165n10 ontological status, 134, 144, 145, 146, 148 ontology, 133, 154 opening, xvi, xvii, 25, 26, 40n9, 49, 58, 90, 208, 247–8. See also clearing; Lichtung oppression, 13, 163, 240, 241 organism, 18, 23, 25, 26, 33, 124, 125, 143n6, 151. See also animals other (otherness), ix, xi, xv, 41n11, 75, 139, 151, 161, 204, 206, 210, 211, 212, 238 overpowering, 173–80, 183. See also power painting, xv, 24, 75–6, 97nn25 and 28, 187, 190, 193–4 paradox, ix–x, xi, 8, 12, 13, 56, 216 paraworld, xiii, xiv, 125, 127, 134 Parmenides, 147, 170–1 peace, 20, 53–4, 117, 192, 194, 198n8 perception, xiv, 27, 82, 113, 117, 131, 135, 229. See also hearing phenomenology, 21, 23, 71, 73–5, 84–5, 92, 96n15, 124, 226 physics, 19, 20, 27, 36, 78, 129

Index physis (phusis), xii, xv, 49, 62–3, 77– 80, 82, 96n30, 97n30, 118, 159, 178, 193, 195, 198n9 place, 5, 24, 43n14, 47, 48, 51–7, 62, 64, 66, 77, 79, 93–4, 130, 134, 139, 172, 173, 174, 179, 180, 187, 190, 191, 195, 199n12, 201, 203–6, 209–17, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 247 Planck, Max, 31 Plato, 28, 29, 35, 38, 169 play, free, 236, 244, 248 poetry, xv, 17, 41, 119, 142, 170, 176, 180, 186, 193–5, 198n9 poi•sis (po•sis), x, xiv, 78, 193 political, 21, 36, 37, 93, 169, 198n8, 220, 231, 239, 241, 242, 243, 244 pollution, 7, 14, 15, 223, 227 population, 9, 12, 128, 204, 223, 227 power, 7–9, 11–16, 33, 36, 47, 51, 62, 66, 75, 76, 79, 97, 109, 123, 126, 135, 138, 140, 158, 163, 164, 170, 173–6, 178, 180, 183n12, 216, 217, 242, 243, 244, 250, 252n11 (see also empowerment; overpowering; will to power); cognitive, x, 90, 163; healing, 94; of language, 30, 156; of reason, 110–11, 156–7; saving, 93, 141 presence, 10, 26, 28, 49, 51, 52, 54, 65, 118, 126, 151, 152, 153, 164, 203–6, 209 presence-at-hand, xiv, 126, 135–8, 140–1, 146. See also readiness-tohand racism, 13–14, 220 readiness-to-hand, xiv, 126, 131, 134–7, 140–1. See also presence-tohand

265

reason, 26, 36, 77, 78, 81, 84–5, 86, 90, 97n28, 110–11, 144, 156–7, 163, 169–70, 238, 244 reflective awareness, 70, 79, 82, 94, 106, 110–12, 114, 244, 250 regime of disposability, 29–31, 39, 43n14 region, 40n9, 42n11, 52, 53, 212, 249 relationality, xvi, xvii, 221, 228, 234, 240, 245, 246–7 releasement, xvi, 238, 249, 250 representation, xiii, 24, 74, 77, 82, 84–6, 127, 128, 130, 135, 142 responsibility, 52, 64, 76, 87, 89–91, 95, 138, 161, 164, 227, 235n8 rhythm, 203–6, 209, 210, 213–14 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 59, 170, 180 risk, 124, 125, 131–7, 140–2 Salleh, Ariel, 133 saying, 18, 39, 42n11, 46, 47, 54, 64–7, 89, 172, 176, 234, 245, 248, 249 saying-after, 63–4, 66–7, 248 Schumacher, E.F., 33, 35 science, 11, 15, 18, 24, 30, 31, 36, 83–4, 99n58, 106–7, 109, 132–3, 141, 197, 217, 228, 233 seeds, 20, 50, 93, 216, 223, 230 sexism, 13–14, 133. See also feminism shepherd of being, xiv, 47, 70, 144, 160, 163 silence, 56–7, 66, 91, 94, 103, 105, 117–20, 187, 206, 212, 250. See also stillness Silesius, Angelus, 86 skilful means (upaya), 239–40 sky, 17–18, 22, 26, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 77, 79, 80, 81, 94, 190, 191, 193, 194, 197, 201, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211. See also fourfold

266

Index

soil, 47, 48–9, 51, 78, 199, 201, 228, 230, 233 Sophocles, xv, 78, 121n16, 170–1, 182n8, 201 soul, 15, 29, 46, 81, 109, 116, 180, 187, 195, 201 space, xv, 24, 26, 77, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130–1, 133, 135, 140, 194–5, 197n5, 231 (see also maps; margins; region); mathematical, 81, 129, 131, 135; outer, 127, 132, 170; primordial, 190–1, 194–6; and time, 26, 191, 237, 246 spatial metaphor, 249 standing reserve (Bestand), 12, 127, 129, 159, 175, 179, 244, 250 Starhawk, 50, 68 stillness, x, 65–7, 118, 247 strangeness, 6, 94, 169–70, 180, 211 subjectivity, x, xii, 11, 13, 24–8, 30, 31, 33, 34–5, 41, 42n11, 72, 73, 88–9, 138, 144, 147, 150, 153, 160, 216, 217, 221, 238. See also dualism; objectivity system, xiii, 7, 36, 43, 56, 82, 93, 123, 128–9, 130, 133, 225, 236, 243, 248 Tao, 61n17, 242, 252n5 Taylor, Charles, 120n3, 121n17 techn•, 78–9, 159, 169, 177–8, 179 technicity (Technik), 29–30, 39, 42n12, 43nn13 and 14 technology, x–xi, xv, 5, 7–8, 10–15, 17, 43n13, 70, 76, 78, 84, 91, 93, 94, 123, 127–33, 135, 142, 158–60, 162, 164, 169–70, 179–80, 186, 191, 194–5, 216, 223, 233, 238, 241. See also guilt; information technology thanc, 249–50, 152n11

theory, 37, 70, 82, 113, 236–7, 238–43, 251. See also system thinging, 10, 77, 234, 237–8, 244–50. See also enowning; Ereignis thinking, 6, 8, 13, 23, 26, 30, 39, 46, 66–7, 86, 90, 105, 125, 158, 222, 226, 228–9, 233, 234, 235n10, 236–45, 248–50; calculative, x, 8, 21, 24–5, 28, 31, 43, 74, 84, 90, 158–60, 228, 244, 250; meditative, reflective (andenkendes), 6, 25, 32, 74, 77–8, 80, 82, 86, 160; theoretical, 6, 240, 243; ungrounding of, 237–8, 244–6, 248; usefulness of, 243–4 thoughtlessness, x, 6, 94, 250 time, 9, 19, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 36, 38, 41n11, 91, 92, 98n34. See also space Todtnauberg, 93–4, 99n61 tool, xiii, xiv, 73, 131, 134, 135, 142, 144, 149, 154, 232 Trakl, Georg, 170, 180, 184n40 transformation, xi, 28, 46, 47, 51, 56– 9, 68, 74, 180, 205, 222, 241–2, 243 transposition, xiv, 134, 139–40, 150, 206, 212 truth, 6, 10, 28–9, 30, 154, 161, 240–1. See also al•theia; disclosure turning, 25, 27–32, 36–7, 39 Uexküll, Jakob von, 112–14, 121n20, 124–5, 143n6 Umgebung, 104, 113. See also environment Umwelt, 33, 112, 114, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143n6, 184n24 uncanniness, xv, 118–19, 169, 171–2, 176–81, 187 Unheimlich, 170–4, 183n10. See also deinon

Index Vester, Frederic, 36 violence, xv, 65–6, 68, 78, 163, 173– 80, 183n12, 204, 211, 213 we-ness, 218–21, 234 weeds, xvi, 222–3, 224, 229–33 Whitman, Walt, 46, 60n1 will to power, 29–30 wohnen, 53–4, 196. See also dwelling world, 25, 26, 27–8, 32–3, 45, 104, 112–14, 126–7, 130, 137, 140, 146–

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50, 176–7, 179, 187, 213, 216, 218, 236, 250 (see also animals: ‘worldpoor’; paraworld); -building, 77–80, 114, 136; contrasted with earth, 70, 80, 222, 247, 250; natural, 5, 14, 75, 76, 83, 176, 179, 256 world picture, xiii, 130 worm, 48, 58, 155, 215–16, 231 zoocentric perspective, 125, 133, 134

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New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics General Editor: Kenneth Maly Gail Stenstad, Transformations: Thinking after Heidegger Parvis Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy Bernhard Radloff, Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism: Disclosure and Gestalt Kenneth Maly, Heidegger’s Possibility: Language, Emergence – Saying Be-ing Robert Mugerauer, Heidegger and Homecoming: The Leitmotif in the Later Writings Graeme Nicholson, Justifying Our Existence: An Essay in Applied Phenomenology Ladelle McWhorter and Gail Stenstad, eds., Heidegger and the Earth: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, Second, Expanded Edition