Ereignis

What is Ereignis (“the event of appropriation” or “enowning,” as it has been translated in English)? I’m not prepared yet to really answer this question (I haven’t read much of Heidegger that is necessary for answering this, namely the Contributions to Philosophy), so I’ll just sketch out how I think an answer could be constructed. At the very least, it will direct people to some key passages (I will later cite these passages explicitly).
First, however, we have to ask what is being asked by this question. What is the function of Ereignis in Heidegger’s philosophy such that it provokes us to define it? A short summary will suffice.
Being and Time thought Being (Sein) from the perspective of a being (Seiende), Dasein. However, it did not seek to think of Being as the ground of this being or any being, and thus was not metaphysical in its basic intention. By “ground” we mean essentially “as the highest being,” and so by metaphysics we mean the thinking that thinks Being as the highest being. As Heidegger puts it in “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” metaphysical thinking “seeks out the ground for beings,” and thus elevates a being to the place of Being. Anti- or post-metaphysical thinking, like that of Being and Time, thinks Being as Being, as Being that may indeed ground beings but is not in its essence only the ground of beings. Being for anti- or post-metaphysical thinking is more than merely the ground of beings, and does not allow itself to be represented as a being. But Being and Time essentially thought this non-grounded conception of Being—as we said—precisely by turning towards a being, Dasein, and displaying its relationship to Being. How did this not ground this being in Being? How was Being defined in Being and Time other than as the grounding possibility of Dasein?
Because, as Heidegger constantly repeats throughout Being and Time, Dasein is this possibility. Dasein, in other words, has a special relationship to Being such that it does not have to have Being as its ground. It can remain open to Being, such that its Being is itself, always. Heidegger calls this openness of Dasein disclosive understanding. Thus, by analyzing concretely the disclosive structure of Dasein in its Being, Heidegger thinks against metaphysics.
Nevertheless, the analysis of Being and Time does not think Being itself. And thus the analysis of Dasein does not truly become post-metaphysical, even if it does set itself up against metaphysics. Turning this against into a post-metaphysical position was to be accomplished through the completion of the analysis of Dasein precisely in its openness, which meant in its temporality, its finiteness. But Being and Time was never completed, presumably because the way time made Dasein open could not articulate itself explicitly in terms of temporality. Heidegger then takes a different tack towards the problem of thinking Being without seeking the ground for beings.
Beginning with “On the Essence of Truth,” and most exhaustively in his Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger explicitly analyzes the openness itself insofar as Being makes it possible (and for the most part not in terms of temporality). He thus dispenses with any extensive analysis of beings whatsoever. In other words, he thinks the disclosure in the disclosive understanding of Being that Dasein possesses under a new name, unconcealment, and also (because Dasein has disappeared from view for him) as a constitutive feature of Being itself.
It is in this analysis of unconcealment that Ereignis begins to be thought as well. How? Heidegger brings himself back to the fact that Being is still not a ground. This means that it is not, i.e. it does not have Being. For it is Being: it already has it, such that saying that Being is remains a distortion of the nature of Being—it makes Being into something which has properties, a being. Thus unconcealment, though it is a constitutive feature of Being, does not reside in Being. Unconcealment, as an openness to being considered without reference to beings, comes about to reveal Being because of Being, but without residing in Being. Thus something must give Being through unconcealment.
This “something,” which, because it gives Being, cannot be either Being or a being, is Ereignis. The thinking of Ereignis is the thinking of how Being can be unconcealed by unconcealment when unconcealment cannot be in or even by Being and Being itself cannot be. This is the genesis of the concept and its need: turning away from Dasein and turning towards unconcealment itself, Ereignis becomes necessary for Heidegger’s thought.
This established, we can now ask what Ereignis actually can be defined as: we know that defining it is clarifying Heidegger’s response to a post-metaphysical question about the openness (that, we remember, is temporal somehow) that allows Being to be brought forth in general, and, on the more restricted anti-metaphysical level of Dasein, the (temporal) openness that allows Being to be brought forth as Dasein’s disclosive understanding whereby it is. The following sketches out how an account of this definition might proceed. And, again, this is only a sketch, as I am only preparing to encounter this issue.
The first mention of something that distinctly possesses the character of Ereignis is in Being and Time. There Heidegger talks of historicality, and within historicality, of the possibility of Dasein to hand itself down to itself. This handing of itself down is nothing other than what is essentially addressed by the lecture “The Principle of Identity,” given in 1957. Dasein’s handing of itself down, which is essentially its repetition, constitutes its accomplishment of extending itself through time while holding itself together in sameness. This sameness is the essence of any concept of identity: it is what identity is founded upon and derives from. Repetition, as the essence of historicality, is repetition then not of the identical, but of the same. And this repetition gives Dasein itself for the future, or, in other words gives itself time.
Reading these two essays together, we can then turn back to the essay “On the Essence of Truth,” which elaborates a basic thesis of Being and Time that truth is to be conceived as unconcealment. As unconcealment, it is expressly not a correspondence theory of truth. And as a non-correspondence theory of truth, it attempts to think the same as the basis for identity rather than just identity. Thinking the latter alone, i.e. without sameness, is merely correspondence. Understood this way, unconcealment is the unconcealment of the same. This same is the sameness of historicality instituting itself as repetition. Repetition as the same is what constitutes unconcealment, the unconcealment of Being. Insofar as unconcealment is also contending with its opposite, concealment—i.e. insofar as unconcealment presupposes concealment or withdrawal—what is concealed is what constitutes the same as the same. This, as Heidegger says in “The Principle of Identity,” is the belonging-together of man and Being. In other words, what constitutes the same as the same is the difference instituted (by Ereignis, as we shall see) between Being and beings (including, but not restricted to, Dasein). This belonging-together is caused by Ereignis.
But what is crucial about all this is that concealment constitutes the same as the same, constitutes repetition as repetition of the same, constitutes unconcealment as unconcealment. As such, concealment becomes the matter to be thought, rather than unconcealment. That is, unconcealment becomes thought by thinking concealment. Heidegger in “On the Essence of Truth” and later (1962) in “On Time and Being” emphasizes that this concealment, because it makes possible the repetition of the same, and therefore unconcealment itself, conceals itself precisely through its coming forth as concealment in unconcealment. In other words, the concealment of concealment pervades in the unconcealment of Being through repetition of the same. This self-concealing, or, as Heidegger calls it (when it is conceived in this way, i.e. as self-concealment) withdrawing, is what gives Being through unconcealment.
This language of “giving” Heidegger develops in the late lecture “On Time and Being, ” his most explicit reflection on the issue of Ereignis besides his Contributions to Philosophy. The giving of unconcealed Being proceeds through withdrawal. Withdrawal gives while remaining giving: the giving of unconcealment, the concealment of concealment that makes unconcealment possible, does not pass forth into the unconcealed, into the Being that is given. Rather, this withholding of the withdrawn within itself constitutes authentic giving, a giving that does not engage in any type of exchange—a pure gift. Jacques Derrida in Given Time: Counterfeit Money explicitly brings this issue in “On Time and Being” and its relation to the constitutive movement of Ereignis to the fore, and should be read along with that essay in order to bring all of this out. That done, one may say that this type of giving is a “sending,” as Heidegger puts it, or a “destining,” a “destiny” or “fate.” This reconnects the withholding that gives concealment back with those passages in Being and Time: this is the real movement that underlies Heidegger’s thoughts on “historizing” or the handing-down. In other words, it is this “sending” as destining-withholding that constitutes the essence of repetition, if repetition is the essence of both the historical and the unconcealment of Being, as we have already established.
But the issue in “On Time and Being” is what withdraws, and this leads us directly to Ereignis, the name for this “what.” The “event of appropriation” or “enowning” that is Ereignis in the end allows for this withdrawal, this sending, and, as such, allows for Being. All the above, then, gets clearly seen in the light of Ereignis as what withdraws. Identity, difference, the same, concealment, unconcealment, Being: all these are constituted as various modes of Ereignis, the happening that brings about withdrawal, i.e. what withdraws. Ereignis, then, gives Being. But Ereignis is less existent than Being is, since it gives what can’t even be—Being. In other words, Ereignis, like Being, but even more than being, is not. What is Ereignis, then? How does it give?
In asking this, of course, we are asking as to its Being, which it does not possess. Ereignis gives Being. This is another issue tackled in “On Time and Being.” The way the problem is resolved, however, is to realize that we are really talking about something that lies on the horizon of Being. In Being and Time, Heidegger determined the horizon of Being as temporality. Ereignis and the temporal horizon of Being seem to have something in common then. Heidegger pursues this in “On Time and Being” perhaps most of all. Ereignis is not temporality, however. When we say that Ereignis is something that, as giving Being, resides on the horizon of Being, i.e. determines it as something transcending Being, i.e. as something determining yet lying outside of Being—when we say that Ereignis is this, we are saying that Being’s horizon as time as determined in Being and Time is held there as a horizon for Being by Ereignis. Ereignis, in “On Time and Being,” is not the “what” of withdrawal that determines Being in the sense of subordinating Being to this withdrawing “what:” Being is not given by something that is more than it. Rather, Being is given by the withdrawal of the togetherness of Being and temporality, of Being and time: Ereignis is this togetherness itself. If we were asking just a moment ago as to how Ereignis gives Being, then, we were not talking about Ereignis as something “more in Being than Being” which might give Being. Rather, we were talking of the horizon of Being as temporality constituting Being as such as the essence of Ereignis: Ereignis is the withdrawing of that in unconcealment which opens itself up to a temporal horizon, i.e. is the temporalizing of unconcealment in the repetition of the same—and this movement of Ereignis as withdrawal makes time the horizon of Being, makes Being be given temporally, or, finally, gives time and gives Being (es gibt Zeit, und es gibt Sein, as Heidegger says throughout “On Time and Being”).
It might seem as if this detour through temporality has confused everything. But what is to be held in our minds in order to penetrate into the matter of thinking is this: time is the horizon of Being only insofar as “there is” Ereignis. At the same time, there Being is given as unconcealment only insofar as there is Ereignis, i.e. what withdraws in unconcealment. Ereignis is the holding-together of Being and temporality such that they co-determine each other, and at the same time is the fundamental withdrawing that would make such a holding-together forgotten, that would give only Being and time and nothing more (i.e. that would not give the concealing along with the unconcealed temporal Being).
We talked about horizon just a few moments ago, and seemed to have said that both time and Ereignis were the horizon of Being. Derrida goes into this complication with amazing rigor (showing that Ereignis essentially must be in time and outside of time at the same time if it is to be preserved in the sense Heidegger thought it), and clears up what was going on in Heidegger’s head with respect to this. But insofar as we’re just sketching this “what was going on” with respect to the texts available to us, I think we can say that Ereignis is supposed to give time as well as Being precisely in relating time to Being as its horizon. In terms of Being—i.e. disregarding the word “time” for a moment and the matrix of thought that goes with it—we might say that Ereignis gives Being in its finitude, in its unconcealment on the basis of concealment. That is, in terms of Being, Ereignis is what makes Being something that resists boundless unconcealment (and does so by linking Being with time)—i.e. that resists being present. Being is presence by virtue of Ereignis; at the same time, it is never what is present by virtue of the same Ereignis. Boundless unconcealment that results in the giving of Being as a full present, as a being, is prevented by Ereignis. Returning to the issue of time, it accomplishes this determining of unconcealment by concealment through the linking up of Being with temporality.
This is all I can say for now without this all becoming mush, but I hope the movement of the reading is at least clear. Most of all, I hope I brought forth the necessity of seeing how various texts need to be thought together here in order for a coherent conception of Ereignis to come forth. These texts, brought together, are: “On the Principle of Identity” and “On Time and Being,” the chapter on “Temporality and Historicality” in Being and Time and “On the Principle of Identity,” “On Time and Being” and “On the Essence of Truth” with Being and Time, and, in the end, a connection we have left for another time, “On Time and Being” and Hegel’s section on “Determinate Being” in his Science of Logic, which brings together how all this is an attempt to reconceive of the issue of negativity and historicality without reference to the present, to boundless unconcealment or identity without sameness that withdraws itself in repetition.