The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy

6. Surplus Essence: Gestell and Automatic Conversion

151 Second Incision: Gunst   ] in which the freedom of offering conceals the treasure of its essence [  ` @   X   verbirgt].”5 Perhaps, however, there is indeed no “authentic” thinking of giving in Heidegger. Perhaps the Heideg-          ity that consists in “giving what one doesn’t have.” I                    +   X                  see that the favor does not, for Heidegger, interrupt change but instead appears qua a new ontological exchange. The instances appropriated by each other         +   -        $               @                   +   $   3                           -        $         9      >       well offend against the gift if the latter is authentic       3$  %   “is given . . . even and especially if it loses all ontic       9 But this, again, also is not  }       |               3       +  $                    9        this when he speaks of the gift as a new exchange between being and beings. He does not forget things. $         + '      6 Surplus Essence Gestell and Automatic Conversion Thinking being in its own right does not, then, come down to serving notice to all exchangeability between being and beings. Indeed, the other thinking does stop taking beingness as its foundation. But the possibility of suspending the exchange of being and beingness— of giving the change that governs the entire history of metaphysics—only serves to liberate the play of a new ontological substitution: the “favor,” the structure of a mutual (ex)change involving neither hierarchy nor domination between being and beings. We have come back to the metamorphoses and migrations (W, W, & V) announced in Contributions when the “other beginning” is. The new ontological exchangeability, we recall, is often called the “simultaneity [Gleichzigkeit] of being and beings.” Dasein, writes Heidegger, “transforms [verwandelt] be-ing and beings in their simultaneity [das Seyn und das Seiende zugleich in ihre Gleichzeitigkeit verwandelt].”1 This metamorphosis is not at all an occlusion of their difference but respects, on the contrary, their “separation ” (rtlfm+ḱn). Could some other power than the one that proves to be the mutability of being and beings be revealed in this metamorphosis? Another power than this power enabling them to grant favors to each other, 155 156 The Heidegger Change exchange themselves, and pass (in)to each other while not, for that, becoming confused? “Just what are you getting at?” you ask impatiently. What I am saying is that beings are not only given(s) [étant donné] but also something giving [étant donateur]. Metamorphosed beings give being its visibility. Returning to §32 of Contributions€  writing that “being itself, Ereignis as such, will be   `     > šdas Sein selbst, das Ereignis als solches, erstmals sichtbar wird].”2 And in what sense should “visible” be understood here? The  @  * X >      X Œ   [in einer Gestalt . . . ertsmal verwahrt wird].”3 What I dub “fantastic” is precisely this new                    as originary molting, reveals in the same instant the               which responds to ontological mutability as though it were the latter’s echo or shadow—as the narcissism of a new era and time. If certain readers of Heidegger are made uneasy by the fact that Ereignis, as a result of naming the “there is/it gives,” could be a new intrusion of beingness into the very heart of the originary gift, if they venture only the least risk of ontico-ontological confusion or bastardization, it is because they are behind on the metamorphosis of beings. They remain’ `|  ` >  beings, they too, have changed. It is surprising to notice that the majority of Heidegger ’s commentators think beings do not change. Being, yes, because it is transposable from one his- 157 Surplus Essence torical regime to another, but not beings. Although the possibility of novel beings is everywhere acknowledged —technical beings, for instance, like clones, the internet, or novel social arrangements like pactes civils de solidarité (PACS)4 —that ontic structure itself might also be mutable is not. >                 today are no longer the same. The good old beings of                                longer the imprint or body and sensible translation of being. No: the whole of beings is henceforth something else entirely. Being can only show itself “in altered   `   šin den veränderten Gestalten des Seienden],”5         *>        The metamorphosis of beings renders the metamorphosis of being visible. “[B]eings as such also [auch das Seiende als solches] undergo a transformed interpretation [verwandelte Auslegung],”6 and this interpretation accompanies, even while it at the same time precedes, the metamorphosed interpretation of being. Asking after, with regard to both of the changes, the migrations and metamorphoses of being also necessarily involves asking after the migrations and metamorphoses of the beings contemporary with them—an interrogation that aims at the point of a new...