Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event): Of the Event

Edi or’s Afterword

edI tor’s aFt erwor d Martin Heidegger’s second magnum opus, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), is here appearing for the first time, more than a half century after its composition and in the year marking the 100th anniversary of the thinker’s birth. Its appearance inaugurates the publication of the volumes that are to compose division III of his Gesamtausgabe [“Complete Edition,” abbr. GA]. Following up the initial approach to the question of being in Being and Time, that is, in the context of fundamental ontology, Contributions to Philosophy can be said to constitute the first comprehensive attempt at a second, “more originary” approach to and elaboration of the same question in the context of the historicality of beyng. Heidegger is here asking for the meaning of beyng, understood as its truth and essence, in other words, as its essential occurrence, and this essential occurrence is thought as event. Therefore, intrinsically connected to the “official title,” Contributions to Philosophy, is the “fitting rubric,” Of the Event. Although this thinking understands itself to be “a projection of the essential occurrence of beyng as the event,” it is “not yet able to join the free conjuncture of the truth of beyng out of beyng itself.” This thinking is still under way toward such a joining. Nevertheless, in Contributions to Philosophy the elaboration of the question of being within the historicality of beyng does attain for the first time the structure of an “outline” articulated into six parts. This outline is said to be “taken from the still unmastered ground-plan of the historicality of the transition itself,” the “transition from metaphysics to the thinking of beyng in its historicality.” Within this outline, the questioning of beyng in its historicality opens with the “‘resonating’ of beyng in the plight of the abandonment by being” and is carried out “in the ‘interplay ’ between the first and the other beginning,” as a thoughtful “‘leap’ into beyng,” as the thoughtful “‘grounding’ of the truth of beyng,” and as thoughtfully “preparing the ‘future ones’ of ‘the last god.’” A “Prospect ” precedes this outline and surveys the whole of it in advance. By 404 Editor’s Afterword way of a conclusion to Contributions to Philosophy, the section named “Beyng” follows the outline and looks back in an “attempt to grasp the whole once again.” The thinking of the essence of beyng as event thinks the “richness of the turning relation of beyng to the Da-sein it appropriates” and thereby thinks the essence of the human being— that is, thinks Da-sein—out of the turning, which itself belongs within the essence of beyng as the event. The motto of the Gesamtausgabe, “Ways—not works,” is elucidated at the very beginning of Contributions to Philosophy. This is not a “‘work’ in the previous style,” since the thinking of beyng in its historicality is a “course of thought,” on which “the hitherto altogether concealed realm of the essential occurrence of beyng is traversed and so is first cleared and attained in its most proper character as an event.” The eminent position of Contributions to Philosophy within his path of thought is indicated by Heidegger himself in a marginal remark included in his “Letter on Humanism.” He notes that what is said there was “not first thought at the time the letter was composed,” thus in 1946, but lies instead “on the course of a way that began in 1936, at the ‘moment’ of an attempt to say the truth of being simply.”1 The beginning of that way in 1936 consists precisely in Heidegger’s starting to compose Contributions to Philosophy. A second marginal remark in the “Letter on Humanism,” drawing out the first one, says: “‘Event’ has been the word guiding my thinking since 1936,”2 i.e., since the beginning of the working out of Contributions to Philosophy. This crucial text opens the way and yet was not published to inaugurate the Gesamtausgabe but instead is only appearing now, fourteen years after the first volumes in the series. The reason lies in one of Heidegger’s directives for the publication of the Gesamtausgabe, a directive that was of particular importance to him. It stipulated that publication of the writings assigned to divisions III and IV could commence only after the lecture courses of divisions II were brought out. Heidegger explained this decision by remarking that knowledge and appropriating study of the lecture texts were necessary prerequisites for understanding the unpublished writings, especially those from...