The Ontologico-Political Aspect of Heidegger's Thought.pdf Introductory remarks: The fundamental assumptions of Heidegger's thought The following things are presupposed in Heidegger's thought. First, it is Seynsgeschichtlicht, i.e. it has to do with the historical unfolding of Being. It is not a narrowly construed political stance. The historicity of his thought means that the latter can be understood only with respect to the ontological situation of the time. It is a stage in the unfolding of Being. Here, Heidegger can be seen to follow in the footsteps of German Idealism which saw history as the scene or way of Absolute's appearance(-to-itself) wherein philosophy plays a crucial role (cf. [1. P. 25; 2. P. 9, 23-24]). Philosophy formulates the shape in which Being appears. These essential transformations take shape simultaneously in a historical epoch and in the minds of the great thinkers. Currently, we live in an era where the principle shaped first in the philosophy of Plato has achieved its essential fruition (cf. [3]): it achieved more of its essence in Descartes's time than it had achieved in the Platonic time, and even more in the 19th c. of Hegel, Nietzsche and others, and Heidegger positions himself among the epochal thinkers. If there is a political aspect in Heidegger's philosophy, it utterly supervenes on his ontology. It is about the re-appearance of Being. Second, we must heed the wisdom that there is no subject and object distinction, or, rather, that they are in truth one. Although the culture of Heidegger's (and our) time seems to be permeated with the imagery and guidelines of materialistic sciences and "the [technological] use of [material] bodies” (cf. [4]), the ontological understanding of this Geschehen must assume the absence of the dualism. The problem is not "materialism” or “dualism” but a peculiar revelation of unity, which Heidegger calls Gestell. With the term Gestell, the technological is critiqued but not reduced to mere criticism and certainly not to a rejection thereof. He also names it subjectity (Subjektitat) [5. P. 450], or the forgetfulness of Being. Further, we must consider the distinction of subject and Dasein as it corresponds to the distinction of Being and Gestell. On the distinction between subject and Dasein Heidegger could not speak about Dasein if his own Being were not Dasein. There is no difference (a distinction there may well be) between subject and object; hence, a thinker can only say about Wirklichkeit what he can say about himself. If Heidegger speaks about forgetfulness of Being, it is because he himself has forgotten Being. This forgetfulness is to be understood thus: it is not a shortcoming of our time which is successfully avoided by Heidegger (alone) but a constant characteristic of Being. The fault of our time consists precisely in not acknowledging the forgetfulness to Being, of being willing to keep it in mind and make it a property of the self. Subject is precisely the kind of self which has made Being into its property, or object. And Being has thus deprived him of freedom, quid pro quo. Dasein, or freedom, is about letting go of Being, about forgetting it. What is constant is not the subjectivity of Being but its appearance via forgetfulness. Describing this structure (named the ontological difference) is the great contribution by Heidegger. To emphasize, the forgetfulness of the distinction between being and Being is a constant. The remembering of Being is the remembering of the distinction between being and Being. This latter does not refer to a dissolution of the distinction between being and Being but, on the contrary, it refers to the remembering of this very forgetfulness. To remember Being is to remember it as self-concealing (or forgotten): it is simultaneously to remember the distinction between being and Being and the forgetfulness of this distinction. It is by radicalising this forgetfulness of the forgetfulness of Being that this very forgetfulness itself (Being itself) is forgotten: the (post)modern forgetfulness of Being (i.e., Gestell) is a radicalisation of the constant forgetfulness of Being. Like with the death of God which was proclaimed by Nietzsche's madman, it is both a terrible thing and a dawn. It is only possible because the Greeks had failed to think this Being as forgetfulness (Being as Being) and thus, paradoxically, formulated the potentiality for its forgetfulness. Analogous to the dualism between subject and object, there is the dualism between spirit and matter, or the particular and the general. The general would then represent the state run in a mechanistic fashion according to the general law, based on the principle of unity (a Newtonian kind of vis mortua or a Hobbesian Leviathan, also see [6]), and the particular would then represent the individual who is contraposed against the general (the machine-like universality) and may rebel against it, based on the principle of plurality. Heidegger with his supposedly critical stance against the technological and the technologically run society and/or academy would then be placed among the “individualists”; hence, an (unfounded) individualist reading of the term Dasein. But, in truth, Dasein means an unfolding of the world which has not succumbed to the dualism between the one and the many. In Heidegger's own words: Is this one Being something before all unfolding, that is, something that exists for itself, whose independence is the true essence of Being? Or is Being in its essence never not unfolded so that the manifold and its foldings constitute precisely the peculiar oneness of that which is intrinsically gathered up? Is Being imparted to the individual modes in such a way that by this imparting it in fact parts itself out, although in this parting out it is not partitioned in such a way that, as divided, it falls apart and loses its authentic essence, its unity? Might the unity of Being lie precisely in this imparting parting out? And if so, how would and could something like that happen [geschehen]? What holds sway in this event [Geschehen]? (These are questions concerning Being and Time!) [7. P. 25; 8. P. 31]. This structure is discovered as the primordial structure of the Greek thought and the presupposition of the very distinction between matter and form. Matter and form are not separated but are united as power (potentiality) and entelechy. Their unity is energeia17. And its structure recovered is the structure of Dasein [10. P. 250-253]. On the one hand, the Greek nnoKeiuevov has evolved into the modern subject as the metaphysical basis for the Gestell; on the other hand, its primordial reconsideration by Heidegger demonstrates it to be Dasein, rooted in a constant forgetfulness of Being. The first note on causality: The subject as the causal principle The modern romantic rebellion against the law and regularity or the attempt to find place for the individual in the causal order of the cosmos, the state or even everydayness is but another side of the same coin (cf. [11]): they both express the principle of the subjectum. The Cartesian subject is both the source of mechanical laws which are „logically“, i. e. without contradiction, deduced from the axioms of the res cogitans [12. P. 76] and the owner of the individual will with its conatic attempt at individual happiness. Furthermore, it is this conatic attempt which is the driving force of the technological world. We can explain that with an analogy. Even though the hardware in a computer is more tangible than its software, the former can only exist because of the latter. Likewise, even though modern technologies are more tangible, they can only exist because of the conatic drive of individual happiness. Likewise, the rationalism of the Enlightenment was driven by a romantic force. We can explain it further with another analogy - that of the movement of a hand. Let us suppose that one is manually grasping a glass. Three aspects can be distinguished in this sole movement. The first one is the “brutal” hand muscle movement to embrace the piece of glass. The second one is the meaningful movement of a living hand to take a glass (in order to drink some water). This distinction so far, analogous to the body/spirit distinction1, is not sufficient. Hence, there is the third and most important one - the taking-of-the-glass itself. Just like Aristotle saw that the (“form” or “telos” of the) movement itself is ontologically prior, and the “body” as “matter” exists because of the telos or as the telos. To phrase it in Heidegger's words, we do not hear because we have ears, but we have and can have ears only because we hear and are beings that hear [13. P. 220]. Likewise, it is only because of the modern subject that modern technology can exist as its way of being. The modern subject is the ontological-causal principle of the modern technological uncovering of the world. And Heidegger is so far from opposing causality that his own thought can be said to center on the ontological problem of causality. Everything is “caused” by Being and the way it is revealed. And the modern deterministic-mechanistic-technological notion of causality is but an expression of subjectism (Being revealed as sub-ject). Heidegger's overcoming of the subject consists namely in the realisation of the “forgetful” character of this causal principle. The second note on causality: Subjectum as appearance, or unconcealment Heidegger recovers the structure of the ontological difference by dwelling on the original meaning of su.bieclu.m/nnoKEiuc.vov, among other things, in the first remaining textual evidence of the Western thinking about causality, or “necessity” (то xperav) as the ontological causal principle. It is the Anaximander fragment which, based on John Burnet's analysis, Heidegger takes to have originally been this: „ката то xperavSiSovai y«P апта опор' ка1 т(о1\\' aXX^Xoig rqg абпаад [14. P. 340-341]. It is taken to express the same ontological structure as the Aristotelian one quoted above. It is the structure of the ontological difference: to ypcPiv refers to Being, and the remaining part of the fragment refers to its temporality and beings. For Heidegger, temporality and beings are the domain of the limit (перад), thus, the ever-self-concealing Being can be named by Anaximander the limitless (то aneipov). The latter ever presents the former with its temporal constancy (Weile). Hence the danger that the ever-present constancy will be reduced to the sub-jectum as Being's concealment is forgotten [14. P. 368]. The correct analysis of Dasein implies an ontologically correct understanding of Being as to yjp.ibw This clearly brings us to the analysis of Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand, in Being and Time, which is crucial to the correct understanding of Dasein. Heidegger links xpz^v to yytaoPypaouai and yyip - respectively, I need, I handle, hand [14. P. 366]. Dasein is primordially a handler, a user, and is conceived in the image of Being as the handler and user of beings. Dasein and Being share the same ontological structure. Being is in charge of beings and has them at its disposal (verfugt) [14. P. 363]. Being is likewise characterised both in the analysis of Dasein and in that of Aristotle's (meta)physics (cf. [15. P. 69; 16. P. 247]). The essence of a being is to be the property (опта, Anwesen) of Being as well as to be in-the-world, that is, in the aprioric interrelation with other beings because Being “imparts” but is not “partitioned” (see above). This interrelation by which Being preserves “justice” (т(о1д) in things, or presents them with “justice”, is conceived as joyful (frui). “Frui involves praesto habere. Praesto, praesitum is in Greek vnoKefyevov, that which already lies before us in unconcealment, ovoia, that which lingers awhile in presence. ‘To use' accordingly suggests: to let something present come to presence as such; frui, to brook, to use, usage, means: to hand something over [aushandigen] to its own essence and to keep it in hand, preserving it as something present [in der wahrenden Hand behalten.]” [14. P. 367; 17. P. 53]. Dasein is Dasein, that is, one's “own”, if and only if it has been transformed from subject into the preserver of the presence of the forgetfulness of Being. It is the movement analogous to the movement from the present-at-hand (Vorhanden) to the ready-to-hand (Zuhanden) (cf. [18. P. 120]. The third note on causality: The cause as the general-particular The essence of the subject is the present-at-hand. The ontological origin of it lies in the Platonic eidoq (3). For Heidegger, it is in Aristotle's legacy that the rootedness of the presence of eidoq in the temporal structure of Being can be uncovered and demonstrated. In Metaphysics, Aristotle touches upon the problematics of the relation between the particular and the general and, accordingly, links the grasp of the causal ontological principal (eiSog, teXoq uop

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