Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit

8 Intimations of Being in the Region of Non-Willing

216 Intimations of Being in the Region of Non-Willing Scholar: Do you mean that everything depends on whether we engage in [uns einlassen] explaining the essence of non-willing, or do you mean that it depends on whether we engage in nonwilling itself? Sage: I mean in a certain manner both. (GA 77:67) Anticipatory Thinking: Winke, Ahnungen, and Vermutungen In the opening pages of Contributions to Philosophy Heidegger writes that “the time of ‘systems’ is over,” and yet “the time of building the essential formation of beings from the truth of beyng has not yet arrived” (GA 65:5). In the meantime, that is, during the “crossing over to the other beginning ,” philosophy must confine itself to the patient task of thinking forward in anticipation of this other way of being. During our transitional time, “the other beginning of thinking always remains only an intimation [das Geahnte], though already decisive” (4). Thinking toward the other beginning in an epoch of Seynsverlassenheit requires reattuning our ear to the distant ringing-forth (Anklang) of beyng. The language of “inklings” (Ahnungen) and “hints” (Winke) pervades the later Heidegger ’s writing as he attempts to think that which is not (yet) wholly thinkable ; on the hither side of questioning and problematizing the will, anticipatory thinking attempts to listen and cor-respond to intimations of non-willing. Yet this reserved language is not merely intended to be a sign of our transitional times, as if the other beginning would establish a new era of logical certainty. Rather, the task of thinking for Heidegger becomes inherently a matter of responding to hints and cultivating intimations. In 8 Was heisst Denken? (What Is Called Thinking? or What Calls for Thinking?) Heidegger writes: Because we have for a long time become accustomed to understanding all knowing and ability in terms of the thinking of logic, we measure “inkling” [Ahnung] by this same measure. . . . [But] the authentic sense of having an inkling is the way in which what is essential comes to us and is given to attention [in die Acht gibt], so that we may keep it therein. This having an inkling is not a preliminary step on the stairway to knowledge. It is the great hall wherein all that can be known is kept concealed and harbored [verhehlt, d.h. verbirgt]. (WhD 172–73/207) “In fact,” writes Heidegger elsewhere, “we ought to ask ourselves here in a general way whether proofs of thought . . . are what is essential—or whether what is essential are hints of being [Winke des Seins]” (N2 383/ 238). In a letter to a student who had asked “whence the thinking of being receives its directive,” Heidegger responded as follows. On the one hand, this thinking can provide no credentials “that would permit a convenient check in each case whether what I say agrees with ‘reality’’’; but on the other hand, “it is just as little a matter of arbitrariness [Willkür].” The question for a thinking that is “on the way”—a way (Weg) that is always at risk of “going astray” (Irrweg zu werden)—is rather that of whether it is “rooted in the essential destiny of being.” “Everything here is the way of a corresponding which examines as it listens [Weg des prüfend hörenden Entsprechens ]” (VA 176–79/183–86). This path of a “corresponding which examines as it listens” would involve neither an assertion nor a deference of will. For “thinking,” unlike “science,” does not proceed by way of positing hypotheses and setting out to prove these by way of calculations of certainty ; nor does it, like “theology,” have an infallible Word and Will of revelation to which it can defer in faith. Rather, Heidegger suggests that we must carefully and with fore-sight (vor-sichtig) risk suppositions (Vermutungen ) of thinking beyond the closure of the horizon of onto-theology. In the previous chapter we considered the difficulties involved in (thinking) the transition from will to non-willing. How would the historical essence of man be transformed from the technological will to mastery to a way of being other than willing? If it were to be either simply by means of a will to self-determination, or simply by means of a passive submission to a higher decree, then the problem of the domain of the will would be reproduced precisely in the attempt to step beyond it. The task is to think the transition out of the domain of the will in such a...