Heidegger and the earth (die Erde)

Some significant quotes from "The Thing" and "The Origin of the Work of Art," that relate to the concept of "earth" and "world," and essentially show that "earth" in the work of art essay comes to stand in for what Heidegger will later develop into "the fourfold:" I'd advise anyone who is reading the work of art essay to read "the fourfold" where they see "earth," and then look at the parts of the essay on the thing to see how the fourfold, in its being owned over to enowning, or, put differently, in the fourfold's belonging-together in the onefold, is "the world:"

The potter makes the eathern jug out of earth that he has specially chosen and prepared for it. The jug consists of that earth. By virtue of what the jug consists of, it too can stand on the earth, either immediately or through the mediation of table and bench. What exists by such producing is what stands on its own, is self-supporting. When we take the jug as a made vessel, then surely we are apprehending it--so it seems--as a thing and never as a mere object. Or do we even now still take the jug as an object? Indeed.
-"The Thing," in Poetry, Language, Thought, 165

The spring stays on in the wate of the gift. In the spring the rock dwells, and in the rock dwells the dark slumber of the earth, which receives the 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 Thing," 170

Our language denotes what a gathering is by an ancient word. That word is: thing. The jug's presencing is the pure, giving gathering of the onefold fourfold into a single time-space, a single stay.
-"The Thing," 171

Earth is the building bearer, nourishing with its fruits, tending water and rock, plant and animal. When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three [sky, mortals, divinities] along with it by way of the simple oneness of the four.
-"The Thing," 176

To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies. The animal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it. Death is the shrine of Nothing, that is, of that which in every respect is never something that merely exists, but which nevertheless presences, even as the mystery of Being itself. As the shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of Being. We now call mortals mortals--not because their earthly life comes to an end, but because they are capable of death as death. Mortals are who they are, as mortals, present in the shelter of Being. They are the presencing relation to Being as Being.
-"The Thing," 176

...This mirroring does not portray a likeness. The mirroring, lighting each of the four, enowns their own presencing into simple belonging to one another. Mirroring in this enowning-lighting way, each of the four plays to each others. The enowning mirroring sets each of the four free into its own, but it binds these free ones into the simplicity of their essential[/swaying] being towards one another.
The mirroring that binds into freedom is the play that betroths each of the four to each other through the enfolding clasp of their mutual enowning. None of the four insists on its own separate particularity. Rather, each is owned-over-to its own being within their mutual enowning. This owned-over-to-enowning is the mirror play of the fourfold. Out of the fourfold, the simple onefold of the four is put forth/undergone.
This enowning mirror-play of the simple onefold of the earth and sky, divinities and mortals, we call the world.
-"The Thing," 177 (I've deviated significantly from Hofstader's translation in transcribing this: "lighting" I've used instead of "lightening," "put forth/undergone" I've used instead of "ventured," and I've adopted the more modern translation of ereigenen as "enowning" instead of "appropriation" as well as ubereigenen as "owning-over-to" instead of "expropriating:" this has entailed the rearrangement of a few sentences, but overall I hope the passage reads better in this rendering of it.)

The thing stays--gathers and unites--the fourfold. The thing things world. Each thing stays the fourfold into a happening of the simple onehood of the world... Thinging is the nearing of the world.
-"The Thing," 178 (compare "the thing things world" to Heidegger's amazing sentence from Being and Time: "Dasein is the world existingly." Perhaps Dasein as ek-sistence could be said to be that which ek-sists the world? Expressed differently, is ek-sistence the nearing of the world?)

Being-towards-death, sur-vie, and the specter

Justice... must carry beyond present life, life as my life or our life... To be just: beyond the living present in general--and beyond its simple negative reversal. A spectral moment, a moment that no longer belongs to time, if one understands by this word the linking of modalized presents (past present, actual present: "now," future present). We are questioning in this instant, we are asking ourselves about this instant that is not docile to time, at least wo what we call time. Furtive and untimely, the apparition of the specter does not belong to that time, it does not give time... This justice carries life beyond present life... not toward death but toward a living on [sur-vie], namely, a trace of which life and death would themselves be but traces and traces of traces, a survival whose possibility in advance comes to dis-join or dis-adjust the identity to itself of the living present as well as of any effectivity.
-Specters of Marx, "Exordium," xix-xx.

I will write on this in the next few days: the main connection is that here we are not being towards death, towards a moment of actuality or a now (even if this now, as in Heidegger, is precicely an opened-up or ecstatic Augenblick). Hopefully I'll be able to get to this around Friday, and will also include remarks concerning Derrida's Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question.

Derrida: Trace and Specter

Derrida in his last interview before his death explicitly equates the logic of two of his greatest concepts, the trace and the specter, the first used in his early writings, the second in his robust later work. Reading the latter into the former, one can understand it as a continuation of the thought of Heidegger on Hegel and the latter's concept of Geist. That is, if Geist is composed of the certain, deliberate death (negation) of un-Conceptual existence to be certainly, deliberately reborn in the Concept, understanding the trace as the spectral means understanding it as a different relationship of existence to death, to negativity. The spectral is the un-dead, the concrete anticipation of a death that is never certain to come precisely because it may have already passed the point at which it could be present. But as trace, it is clear from Derrida's early writings that it is also what Heidegger termed the sheltering in the withdrawing of being, the operation of Ereignis or enowning. That is, the relationship of existence to death is reconceived because what relates itself to death for Derrida (and Heidegger) is not existence, but this enowning movement of being, the movement of truth. In short, by combining these two concepts we are able to see that what Derrida was able to do was to exploit the French reworking of Hegelian negativity that was popular in the fifties (and earlier, in the work of Kojeve, Bataille, and Blanchot) with a concept that was not concerned with existence, and thus more concerned with being in the Heideggerian sense (the sense in which it was what was given by a movement of truth). In other words, he was able to bring French philosophy back to the sense of being that Heidegger was pursuing, out of its reified Sartreian form as existence. He was able to bring philosophy out of its concern with death and the present (existence) and towards a concern with death and the movement of presencing (which is chracteristic of enowning). The specter, then, is the figure that was concealed under the figure of the trace in Derrida's early writings.
As far as a critique of Hegel goes, and Heidegger's relationship to it as developed and exploited by Derrida, I can only outline that it would be a returning of Geist to its original signification in German, i.e. ghost. Derrida would show that the work of Heidegger is an exposure of the Hegelian tendency to suppress the spectral in its narration of the death that is constitutive of negativity as determinate--in other words, of the suppression of indeterminate negativity or abstract negativity. I'll outline all this in a clearer fashion sometime in the future--I just write now what is occuring to me. Here's the quote from Derrida that should show the links I've made here:

I have always been interested in this theme of survival, the meaning of which is not to be added on to living and dying. It is originary: life is living on, life is survival [la vie est survie]. To survive in the usual sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. When it comes to translating such a notion, Benjamin emphasizes the distinction between uberleben on the one hand, surviving death, like a book that survives the death of its author, or a child the death of his or her parents, and, on the other hand, fortleben, living on, continuing to live. All the concepts that have helped me in my work, and notably that of the trace or of the spectral, were related to this "surviving" as a structural and rigorously originary dimension.
-Learning to Live Finally, 26.