Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic Grounds

2. Exilic Thoughts: Alterity and Spatiality in the Project of Being and Time

2 Exilic Thoughts Alterity and Spatiality in the Project of Being and Time Introduction Throughout the development of Heidegger’s thought spatiality becomes increasingly present in the articulation of the question of being. A change in focus seems to occur in Heidegger’s thinking from his early single emphasis on the temporal horizon of being to his later preoccupation with the spatiality of beings.1 In Being and Time the discussion of being concerns mainly its temporality. Heidegger states in the first page of 1. There are few works on Heidegger and spatiality. The two main works I have followed are Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, “Wahrheit-Zeit-Raum,” in Die Frage Nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1997); and Edward Casey, “Proceeding to Place by Indirection ,” in The Fate of Place (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). I have also referred to Emil Kettering, Nähe: Das Denken Martin Heideggers (Pfüllingen: Neske, 1987); Didier Franck, Heidegger et le problème de l’espace (Paris: Minuit, 1986); and Maria Villa-Petit, “Heidegger’s Conception of Space,” in Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments , ed. Christopher Macann (New York: Routledge, 1992). Being and Time that his project is “the interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of being.”2 In the 1935–36 lectures that formed the basis for “The Origin of the Work of Art,” being and spatiality appear inseparably intertwined in the discussion of the site of the Greek temple.3 Then, in Contributions to Philosophy (1938), Heidegger discusses originary temporality (ursprüngliche Zeit) in terms of the “time-space” (Zeit-Raum) of the truth of being, where spatiality assumes equiprimordial relevance with temporality in the disclosedness of being.4 Finally, in the 1950s in “Art and Space” (1969), Heidegger discusses the disclosedness of being in terms of “place” (Ort).5 The issue of spatiality in Heidegger’s thought leads to the alterity of events of beings and thought, an aspect of the question of being that points toward the possibility of a thinking (a philosophical discourse) that engages alterity outside the interpretation of beings in terms of objective and ideal presence. This chapter shows that the difficulty of engaging the alterity of events of beings and thought is tied to Heidegger ’s engagement of spatiality in Being and Time. This is done by first showing that spatiality appears as a figure of alterity in Being and Time, and by then turning to the way Heidegger’s project in general takes up the issue of alterity through his development of an “apophantic logos.” This examination ultimately shows that Heidegger’s project opens a 58 Themes 2. BT, 1, italics in original (SZ, 1). 3. “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in Holzwege, GA 5. Cf. Heidegger’s 1931–32 version of the lecture “Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks. Erste Ausarbeitung,” in Heidegger Studies 5 (1989): 5–22. Compare how this same relation of spatiality and being appears in “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1993). See also “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken,” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfüllingen: Neske, 1985). 4. In Contributions to Philosophy, tr. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), Zeit-Raum occurs as the Ab-grund, the abysmal truth of being. See also especially “Der Zeit-Raum als der Ab-grund,” in Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65, 371–79. My interpretation of Heidegger’s thinking in the 1930s is mainly based on the work of John Sallis, of Charles Scott, and of Daniela Vallega-Neu’s Die Notwendigkeit der Gründung im Zeitalter der Dekonstruktion (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997); as well as on the work of the contributors to Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy,’ ed. Charles Scott, Susan Schoenbohm, Daniela Vallega-Neu, and Alejandro Vallega (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001). 5. “Place (Ort) always opens a region (Gegend) by gathering things in this region into their belonging together. . . . In the place the gathering plays in the sense of the releasing-sheltering of the things into their region. [Der Ort öffnet jeweils eine Gegend, indem er die Dinge auf das Zusammengehören in ihr versammelt. Im Ort spielt das Versammeln im Sinne des freigebenden Bergens der Dinge in ihre Gegend].” “Die Kunst und der Raum,” in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, GA 13, 207, my translation. space of thought that, because of its awareness of...