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5. The Event of Enthinking the Event Richard Polt What sort of thinking is Heidegger trying to carry out in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)? Or should we rather say that the thinking at work here is carrying him—as a happening that sweeps him up in its force? Neither alternative seems right, for Contributions cultivates a way of thinking that tries to escape rigid distinctions between passivity and activity as well as between the thinking subject and the object of thought. Such thinking goes by various names: “inceptual thinking” (das anfängliche Denken, §§20–31), “ingrasping” (Inbegrif¶ichkeit, §27), “en-thinking” (Er-denken, §265), and even “philosophy” (e.g., §§14–17, 258–59). The expression Er-denken is especially provocative. Erdenken ordinarily means “to think something up,” “to invent it” (er¤nden); by adopting the word Erdenken, Heidegger seems to imply a dimension of poetic inventiveness in his thought. But how—one might ask—is inventiveness compatible with truth? The conception of truth as correspondence (correct representation) tends to look upon inventiveness with suspicion : creativity must be subordinated to the way things are. This conception of truth has often been taken for granted in both the natural and the human sciences. As Heidegger puts it in “What Is Metaphysics?” all these disciplines interpret themselves as dedicated solely to representing beings themselves and nothing else—no inventions, no fantasies.1 This sober dedication to what is may sound innocuous, but Contributions boldly asserts “the lack of truth in all science” (GA 65, 143; CP, 99).2 The very word Er-denken, then, is part of Heidegger’s assault on contemporary concepts of truth and thought, in which he accuses the apparently detached and neutral theories of modern research of imposing a domineering regime on beings by thinking of them only as “re-presented object [s]” (GA 65, 141; CP, 98). However, Heidegger’s enterprise of “enthinking” is more than just a reaction to modern research. According to him, the modern concept of representation is only one remote derivative of a fundamental event that shaped the “¤rst beginning,” or the early history of Western thought: the manifestation of being as presencing. In his “other beginning,” Heidegger seeks a more radical understanding of being in terms of “be-ing” or “enowning.” Enthinking forms part of this radical step beyond being as presencing and thus beyond all traditional theories of thinking and truth. In order to understand the character and sources of enthinking, then, we must respond properly to enowning. But if Heidegger is right, we cannot do so by means of traditional, representational thought; we ourselves must engage in enthinking and thus allow enthinking and enowning to elucidate themselves. This makes it particularly hard to 82 Richard Polt describe enthinking in accessible terms and nearly impossible to de¤ne it. However, I propose that we can approach enthinking as the event of enthinking the event. This implies that enthinking is not just about enowning but is enowning—if this claim is properly understood. In other words, enthinking is a happening that belongs inextricably to the happening of enowning itself, because enthinking is a crucial instance of the emergence and ¶ourishing of meaning that is, in rough terms, what the word “enowning” indicates. A fuller sense of enowning will emerge as we explore enthinking; before we go further, however, the following brief glosses of “enowning” and other key words may be useful. These glosses are intended not as self-evident de¤nitions but as distillations of an interpretation of Contributions that I cannot fully justify in this essay. “Beings” (das Seiende, also translated by Emad/Maly as “a being“) denotes all that shows up as making a difference to us, all that is revealed to us as other than nothing . “Being” (Sein) denotes the meaning3 that beings in general have for us; Heidegger often emphasizes being’s link to beings by speaking of it as “the being of beings.”4 “Dasein” denotes a condition in which the being of beings becomes a questionable issue for us, an issue that is at stake as a living problem.5 “Be-ing” (Seyn) denotes the happening in which the being of beings is given to us as a questionable issue and we thus enter the condition of Dasein.6 “Enowning” (Ereignis, formerly rendered by most translators as “appropriation” or “the event of appropriation“) does not denote something beyond or separate from be-ing but rather the distinctive way in which be-ing holds sway or essentially...

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