The Heidegger Change: On the Fantastic in Philosophy

4. Outline of a Cineplastic of Being

95 “. . . This Is What Changes” within the realm of these distinctions, the Gestalt of the human essence appears as the source that gives meaning [die Gestalt des Menschenwesens als Quelle der Sinngeburg]. Transcendence, understood in its multiple meanings, turns around [kehrt sich um] into a corresponding rescendance [Reszendenz] and disappears therein. The kind of descent via the Gestalt [Rückstieg durch die Gestalt] occurs in such a way that the presence of the latter represents itself, becomes present again in what is shaped by its shaping [im Geprägten ihrer Prägung wieder anwesend wird].”47 The integration of the thinker in the thought becomes visible and thinkable from the moment the                        '      '  comes to its end by falling back in on itself. $        '    #  ment of metaphysics that renders possible its re-               $           '   all the “ontological ambiguity” of Nietzsche’s thought                The end of metaphysics is seen—concretely, really. So it is no phantom, but looks exactly like a molting , a metamorphosis. Man manipulates his slough, it being at last graspable and prehensible. It is then @            @  ` him to '     '        0        The form of man, become visible for itself, is imprinted on everything, everywhere. The world is stamped with the character of “humanity.” The  >  ` >       @@   itself—Heidegger calls this a “new type of humanity”—is 96 The Heidegger Change precisely the phenomenon of the achievement of metaphysics (“rescendance” imaging in some fashion “transcendence ”): a continually growing “anthropologization” of the being of beings, an increasingly pronounced “humanization” of beings.”48 This humanization, which is analyzed without respite in the second (German or French) volume of Nietzsche   ` > that “metaphysics as such is nihilism proper.”49 The history of metaphysics in its whole entirety ends in    ` €@€  ` * * of “the self-fashioning [Selbstprägung] of man,” which aims at “absolutely empower[ing] the essence of power for dominion over the earth.”50 It is at the same time possible—now the second possibility—for a skin to grow back that would not be that of “man” and that would allow for seeing that “being is no fabrication [ein Gemächte] of human beings and humanity no mere special case among beings.”51 It is possible that transformation and ontological transformability ever remain unmasterable and authorless, change being neither our doing nor our work. 5        '        $   9       > @   @  *     are what we are—divided. Is this complicity and divorce between historicity and the evolution of species, then, the dwelling place of philosophy? 4 Outline of a Cineplastic of Being A burden creates no new forces, while it does change [verwandelt] the direction of their motion [indes verwandelt es ihre Bewegungsrichtung], thus creating for whatever force is available new laws of motion [neue Bewegungsgesetztze der verf ügbaren Kraft].1 Who could tell what the difference is between a structural, differential opposition and an imaginary archetype whose role is to differentiate itself?2 You protest. I’ve been speaking the whole time, you say, of migration, metamorphosis, and the migratory structure of metaphysics, but without ever truly clarifying what all this means. We have so far explored together the economy of both the initial and termi-  >> `   * ' € €`>  ¡– * `>>>'  >@ to make apparent the fundamental importance of W, W, & V. Yet it is true that I have not asked which kinetic and metabolic regimes govern metamorphosis and migration. In fact, we do not yet know exactly what Heidegger means by transformation, self-transformation , turning into, mutation, displacement, and self-displacement. We also, moreover, indicated the 99 100 The Heidegger Change possibility of a bond between the historical and biological , but without specifying its stakes. It must not be forgotten that Heidegger never explains his constant use of the triad . . . that he Š*   > *@}>` €  Verwandlung and Metamorphose . . . that he at no point analyzes the passages in Nietzsche’s work }@*   > >@   'Œ@     tion of the Dionysian as a power of metamorphosis (Metamorphose) and displacement3 . . . that he keeps   ` `Œ> >@   q4 And that he never turns toward the great tradition that, from Ovid to Apuleius, imprinted onto metamorphosis its fantastic character. And that he made no allusions to Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants. Or that he just ignores Kafka, whose Metamorphosis (Die Werwandlung) he doubtlessly never read.5¡            philosopher to accord a decisive, meaning ontological, role to Wandlung and Verwandlung> my own might to bring out the broad outline of what I will call the Heideggerian ontological imaginary. Doing so will lead me to specify the use I have made this whole time of my Gestell of reading and€'the Heidegger change'€ *   €> in surreptitiously borrowing from some forms and pathways not strictly Heidegger’s, to draw out and schematize the metamorphic...