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Tinking o Desert Against the Desert:Or Heideggers Non-opical Approach to Die Sache Selbst

Jethro MassJulius-Maximilians-Universitt Wrzburg

Wir suchen berall das Unbedigte, und nden immer nur Dinge.-Novalis

Preface

Tis paper deals with prolegomenal stances required or a proper un-derstanding o the paradoxical nature o Heideggers Sein und Zeit. It shallbe argued that Heideggers magnum opus does not inquire into the mean-ing o being in order to render an answer to the so-called Seinsfrage. In act,several answers have already been given traditionally, which are oundedon the being/beings non-dierentiation (being as God, substance, nature,subject, will and so orth), that is, being has been turned into a topic whilst

it is essentially non-topical, or only an entity can be accounted or as topi-cal or thematic. Tis is the reason why assessing Heidegger as the thinkero being can be misleading, i not overtly wrong, when by this is meantthat being be conceived o as something that can be thematized.

Te ask of Reading Nothingness

In 2 oSein und Zeit(SZhenceorth), Heidegger has dened inves-tigationo course not any investigation, but the one he carries out in hismajor work and, in general, in the whole course o his thoughtthroughthe elucidation o the ormal structure o the question o being. Tequestion o the meaning o being, he says, must be raised anew (gestelltwerden), that is to say, it is always a task o executive nature and whose pro-cedural oundations are not to be let abandoned to the ortuitousness osupposition and rst impressions. What does investigating (untersuchen)mean? What is worth investigating in philosophy? What must be askedabout in philosophy? Perhaps both investigating and asking belong to eachother, and any investigation whatsoever entails a search which is implicitor supposed in its way o asking. But SZ, against what could be supposed

Janus Head, 12(1).Copyright 2011 by rivium Publications, Amherst, NY.All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America

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Janus Head 315or contrary to public opinion, does not intend to raise the question obeing. Tis means that Heidegger is not strictly an ontologist, mostly i by

this is meant the philosophical task o denitely elucidating the categoricalqualities o being.Tis clearly deserves urther explanations, which we begin with a

warning: Te way in which page one oSZis understood shall be the basiso all subsequent assessment o the work. SZopens up, indeed quite dra-matically, with a prologue in heaven (pace H. Mrchen).1 Platos Sophistesis quoted. Let us paraphrase: It is clear that we have always been amiliarwith the word being, with the notion o that which is, and with the

meaning o this term. We know, or we think we know, what it means orsomething to be. But we nd ourselves acing an impasse, an aporia, andan insurmountable diculty now that the time has come or us to inquireabout what it means that something, precisely, is (c. Soph. 246a, 4-5).Tereater Heidegger enacts a move rom entity (that which is) to being(the sense according to which something actually is)which urthermoreoten tends to go unnoticedin stating two questions with their corre-sponding answers:

Do we in our time have an answer to the question o what we reallymean by the word being? Not at all. So it is tting that we shouldraise anew the question o the meaning o Being. But are we nowa-days even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression Be-ing? Not at all. So rst o all we must reawaken an understanding orthe meaning o this question (SZ, Prologue: 1).

From these two questions and their respective answers result some unusual

eatures that inorm us about the sort o investigation that Heidegger isdeliberately crating. One simply needs to notice what our thinker statesas the purpose o his treatise: to elaborate the question o the meaning obeing. A purpose which immediately leads one to pose the question: Whatdoes it mean indeed to elaborate a question only, and not to answer it?Isnt this a rather insignicant aim which, in the end, will leave us utterlyemptyjust like Jaspers described the way he elt shortly ater nishingthe reading oSZ? We are acing a kind o investigation which shows very

special eatures, or the explicit purpose o elaborating the question seemsto suggest that SZhas a rare mission: o teach us how to ask. We mustlearn to pose the question o philosophy and, in connection with that, we

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must also learn to investigate it.Now, provided that there is an immense reception o Heideggers

workwhether or not this reception is supportive o the Heideggerianenterprise does not matter right nowwhich has not paused enough onthis rst page (that is, all the interpreters who plainly arm, as i it wereobvious, that Heidegger is an ontologist or that he restored the rights oancient ontology in contemporary philosophy), it is our duty to analyze,step by step, what is suggested in the opening words oSZ. What does thismove mean anyway: Te move rom beings to being or rom entity to be-ing? Tere is certainly (and this according to Platos Sophistes) an ontologi-cal perplexity in living amongst the entitative (o which we are ully aware)and asking about that which is always already understood (and or which,strangely enough, we cannot thoroughly account). Tis would mean that awider question must be raised: Te question o being in general. We shallconcede, however, that Heideggers assertions in SZs prologue are ratherunusual, to say the least. He indeed does not speak about reinstating therights o ancient ontology, undermined, as it were, by the epistemological-ly-ocused era that we call modern times. Neither does he speak about an-swering as a nal point the question o being. Tere seems to be an error inthe question: We have asked about being, and have responded with beings.

With this we have obliviously presupposed the lack o dierence betweenbeing o entities and being itsel. Why is the question not answered onceand or all? Firstly, because the answers to the question o what it is to beare abundant: Physis, the idea, substance, God, the subject, the spirit, will,man, etc. But, above all, because i we properly understand where the textis leading us, we must reuse to answer altogether. One o Heideggers aimsis, indeed, to raise anew a comprehension or the meaning o this ques-

tion. Tat is to say, not only do we not know but urthermore we also donot seem to mind. Te question itsel appears to us as nonsense, and thismight partly be due to the answers that have been given to us, which let usspread ourselves out and leave aside the ontological question as untimely,unintelligible or simply lacking any importance whatsoever.

But the problem here is even ar more proound. Tere are o coursesome very rm ontological prejudices, rooted in tradition, that serve asan authority (a orce that governs, say, with alse powers when it comes

to thinking) not to ask about supposed nonsense: Being is indenable,obvious, always understood or assumed, or rather the most universal andempty (c. SZ 1: 3-4), etc. But it is not solely philosophical prejudices

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Janus Head 317that warn us about a vane endeavor. Tere is something more to it thatplaces us in ront o an impasse, and that renders a eeling o not being able

to step urther into our investigation. We must grant a strange characterto the investigation itsel, given the act that all question-oriented searchstrives or that which is asked about. And what has Heidegger to oer? Teelaboration o a question and the provocation o an understanding o itssense. However, we can yet again inquire: Is this not altogether insucient?

What is this investigation all about? Are we not engaging in a blusteringmatter, an all-too obscure subject that will only lead us to sentimental fare-ups? Although there is a tendency towards impatience on these regards, adierent attitude is herein required: Tat which Donald Davidson calledthe principle o charity.2 Te latter could prevent one rom rendering themost important philosophical work o the 20th century (considering solelyits vast scope o infuence) and its project, as merely utile or entirely dull.Tis means that we must patiently linger on the rst two chapters o SZ,which constitute the introduction to the treatise. And we must do this notonly in order to adequately understand what is really going on with the textitsel, but also with Heideggers own pathway o thinking: Te so-calledHeideggerian Denkweg. Furthermore, rom the standpoint o the historyo thought, this might contribute to a more satisactory understandingo the development o a radical extreme that arises rom Kant and Post-kantianism, and that comes to a peak in Husserl, but preers to walk theroad o modern thinking otherwise: Te road that goes rom the modernarmation o the subject to its nal (contemporary) dissolution. By thiswe mean that our problem cannot be solved through the aid that moderncritique would in such case provide. Modern critique, we might say, seeksrefection, and with that, the eort is made in order to reach a thematic

realm o investigation. Tat way o proceeding nonetheless does not let usovercome the problem oSeinsvergessenheit, but rather expands it.

What happens, then, with that which seeks to be investigated in SZ?Te investigation has, o course, a peculiar structure, and this is not dueto arbitrary reasons, but rather because, strictly speaking, being cannot bethematized (this is an error which might be observed in traditional ontol-ogy: It makes a theme o something rom which there is no possible themeto be made). Te structure o the investigation has, as Heidegger says, three

parts: (i) ein Gefragtes (that which is asked about), (ii) ein Befragtes(thatwhich is interrogated), and (iii) das Erfragte(that which is to be ound outby the asking). We are clear about (i) and (iii). Tat which is asked about

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(ein Gefragtes) is that in which we have always already been placed: Being,or, in Aristotelian terms, that which determines entities as entities, that on

the basis o which [woraun] entities are already understood (SZ, 2: 6).Tat which is to be ound out by the asking (das Erfragte) reers to the actthat we must not ask about being purely (i we do not want to make it anentity), but rather about the meaning o being, and so what should worryus is the meaning o such a question and the sense o its ontied answers.Could one proceed however by means o pure ontological analysis? I thatwere the case, being would be an entity or, in any case, something. I wecould purely reer to being, i we could translate it or even just utter it, then

we would precisely stand in ront o a thing, whether or not that thing isthe most magnanimous o all extant things (say God). We can naturallymake a theme o anything whatsoever. But we have already been warned inthe meantime that the being o beings is not itsel a being (idem). Teontological dierence itsel implies the middle element o the investigationor (ii): Beings themselves turn out to be what is interrogated (idem). Tismeans that in Heideggers thought the ontological is not a thematization obeing, or o entities, but an explicit account o the being o beings; giventhe act that being is not at the same time an entity, what must be sur-rounded are precisely entities, where being indeed announces itsel and itsmeaning. What must be sought, in surrounding and besieging the beings,is the lighting-up o its being. Envisaging beings with a view to its beingmeans that interpretation does not consist in seeing another being, but inseeing being otherwise (Marion, 1998: 63).

Methodologically speaking, we are proceeding in a manner similarto that observed by Ortega y Gasset in What is Philosophy?(posthumouslypublished in 1957) which makes a clear reerence to the seizure o the city

o Jericho by the Hebrews, as told in Joshua 6: 1-27, the so-called methodo Jericho:

Every great philosophical problem requires a tactic similar to the oneperormed by the Hebrews and their secret roses: No direct attacks,going slowly around in circles, each time in smaller circles, keepingthe sound o dramatic trumpets alive in the air. In the ideologicalsiege, the dramatic melody consists in keeping awake the conscience

o the problems, which are the ideal drama (1964: 279).

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Janus Head 319In Heideggers account, this is truly what is supposed to be done: Keepingunder siege what is problematic and delaying in questionableness. And this

shows how ortunate is, in our case, Ortega y Gassets image, consideringthat Heidegger himsel has prevented us (see SZ 32) rom getting outo the so-called hermeneutical circle, whose terminological backgroundbinds directly to Schleiermachers Zirkel des Verstehens. Soon enough, weare aware that SZdoes not oer any theory o entities,3 and this is be-cause, i properly understood, the meaning that is sought is strictly speak-ing nothing.4 What happens in SZ is rather a destruction (Destruktion)o traditional ontology, that is, not a smashing o ontology, but rather a

repetition (Wiederholung) o its themes with the aim o showing that, onthe basis, the ontological should have never become any theme at all. Teontological should not have been ontied.

All we have stated above implies the necessity or some serious her-meneutical measures, i we do not wish to ail in our intention to read SZin a proper manner. Te reason or this lies not only in the act that we aredealing with a dicult or entangled book, a real headache or translatorsor the like. Tese complexities could easily be sorted out with the develop-ment o a gradual amiliarity with the text, which comes along with the e-ort o coping with a new philosophical jargon.5 We run the risk o oolingourselves i we believe that by acquiring a handul o philosophical tenets(see, or example, Adornos Jargon der Eigentlichkeit), we would be auto-matically equipped or coping well with SZ: Precisely the book where thereis a certain treatment o language, a certain use o grammar without believ-ing in it,6 which must be claried at once. Te reasons or this are ratherimmanent to the text which we pose as an object o thematic elucidation.Te latter is in act quite an inadequate sentence, or it is SZs intention to

surround the non-thematic itsel without, o course, making a theme outo it. But beore we go into this, we must bring up the question o what itmeans to read in philosophy.7

Te aorementioned question, that is, the question as to how is one toread in philosophy, is not at all idle. It is capital or philosophy or variousreasons. First o all, it situates one in the hermeneutical question and, aswe are aware o, Heideggers thought is said to have carried out the herme-neutical transormation o phenomenology. Secondly, the question o how

to read in philosophy introduces one immediately in the core problemoSZ, where Heidegger has, rom the rst pages on, inquired about howshould the meaning o being be read o: In which entities is the meaning

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o Being to be discerned? (Am welchem Seienden soll den Sinn von Sein ab-gelesen werden? SZ, 2: 7). Te problem oSZis, thus, a hermeneutical

problem, and this itsel implies the problem o how to read in philosophy.We are convinced that reading is problematic because, obviously asit is, one can only read that which is positive (what is-there, present orit to be read), that which could be elucidated and discussed. What can beread, then, is the presence o what shows itsel. But i the phenomenonshows itsel as absent in all that has supposedly been seen (theorized) asbeing present and exposed to sight, that is, presented to contemplation orre-presented, we are stepping on rugged ground. Tis explains why Hei-deggers language sometimes turns out to be quite tangled, or what is un-der siege is not an object, and what we must ask in relation to this is: Howis it possible to read something that does not show itsel? Which thingcan be properly named a thing i it does not appear or show itsel? Isthis all about something hidden that we somehow could sense esoterically?Te abundant accusations against Heideggers language can now easily beunderstood. As John Searle has asserted, in the company o the Anglo-Saxon prejudice o the identity o clarity and thought, i you dont say itclearly, you dont understand it yoursel (quoted by Faigenbaum, 2001:183, emphasis added). I this were the case, we could simply close the bookonce and or all and accuse Heidegger, like Carnap dared to do in his mo-ment,8 o spreading mere nonsense and linguistic unsubstantial conusionsdisguised in depth.9

But the heart o the matter here is that clarity is not as clear as thezealous deenders o sight would like to believe, just like common sense(pace G. E. Moore)10 is neither the commonest, let alone a subject withoutthe need o urther elucidation, as Wittgenstein demonstrated.11 Were we

contrariwise to make a serious eort to ace the enormous attempt at ver-balizing what reuses to be thematized, only then will the problematic oSZ begin to acquire more interesting and tantalizing nuances. And a moreenlightening shape as well.

We must, however, be aware o the act that, when we avow that SZmust be read internally, that is, in its own terms o investigation, we byno means want to all into a dogmatic Heideggerianism, as Pierre Bour-dieu believes so when he reers to Heideggerians as the guardians o orms

who consider it heretic or vulgar to read anything outside the work itsel(1991: 17). Bourdieu could be right in stating that, in act, there are Hei-deggerians, but this really should not matter to those who are concerned

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Janus Head 321with die Wahrheit des Seins, as one could say in a Heideggerian ashion, orin a more Hegelian and Husserlian manner, with die Sache selbst. But the

truth is that, rigorously speaking, there should really not be any Heideg-gerians at all, i we acknowledge SZs claim that philosophy should not bedoctrinal (mainly because disciples need a doctrinal corpus through whichknowledge can be transmitted as a handul o tenets). Tis implies that thesole existence o the so-called Heideggerians is in itsel an expression o asuspicious reception, to say the least.

Te question o reading and doctrine should now be easily connect-ed. Moreover, it shall be granted that doctrine is not a desirable quality inphilosophy at all. We should not even have the desire to be Heideggerians12i by this we intend to recite the philosophers thesis, slogans and maxims,as i this were a means or solving philosophical problems. Heidegger couldwell be called a master,13 but he was a master with no doctrine. He is amaster i he provokes, i he opens up new horizons or thought. But it isour duty to traverse through them.

Phenomenology itsel has warned us rom ollowing doctrinal ap-proaches, or it is primarily an ability to see that must be developed. Tismight be what Heidegger signaled when he recalled that Husserl gave himeyes (die Augen hat mir Husserl eingesetzt, GA 63: 5). But what is reallythis ability that ought to be developed? Is it about the talent o a clairvoy-ant, an esoteric capacity only accessible to the enlightened ones? I we wereto trace a historical memoire, Husserl and Heidegger are not the only onesto speak o the development o such an ability. Kant has also dissuaded usrom simply learning philosophy, and rather he has encouraged us to actu-ally philosophize. In his lecture Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie(alecture which, by the way, dates back to the same year as his major work),

Heidegger states, reerring to Neokantians and Neohegelians:

Te basic presupposition or being able to take the past seriously liesin willing not to make ones own labor easier than did those who aresupposed to be revived. Tis means that we rst have to press orwardto the real issues o the problems they laid hold o, not in order tostand pat with them and bedeck them with modern ornaments, butin order to make progress on the problems thus grasped. We wish

to revive neither Aristotle nor the ontology o the Middle Ages, nei-ther Kant nor Hegel, but only ourselves; that is to say, we wish toemancipate ourselves rom the phraseologies and conveniences o the

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present, which reels rom one ckle ashion to the next (GA 24 11:141-142).

Te doctrinal character o philosophy was already condemned when, inPhilosophie als strenge Wissenschaft(1910-1911), and recalling the medievalexhortation Res, non verba!, Husserl discouraged the use o empty scholarphilosophical lingo: Away with empty analysis o mere words [Weg mitden hohlen Wortanalysen]. We must interrogate the things themselves(Husserl, PsW: 305). But when it comes to Heideggers magnum opus,the stimulus raised to develop this ability or asking involves the trainingo a certain way o seeing, not what is present, but what does not and cannever appear, which seems still a bit hazy rom the strictly phenomenologi-cal point o view. We are talking here about acquiring an ability to developa sort o sideways gaze. And this gaze, it is clear, should be accounted orrom within the things themselves, that is to say, it cannot in any case be aphilosophical invention. Phenomenology means basically this: Nothing atall can be made up.

Husserl demands aPrinzip aller Prinzipien, a principle that consti-tutes the basis upon which our intuition can be considered the source o

all rightul knowledge (see Hua III: 24: 52). But how could showing thatwe have intuitive knowledge o the unapparent be anything other than anambiguous enterprise? Heidegger seems to be saying as much, thereby try-ing to use phenomenology as a stepping stone in order to jump to otherunsuspected places. For, what does it mean to exercise a gaze o what hasbeen overlooked? Heidegger seems to be leading us to a phenomenology othe unapparent,14 a truly paradoxical expression considering that the actiono seeing is a transitive one and thus supposes the object to be seen. But

again, this investigation is not about anything at all.I by aporia we understand, etymologically, not being able to pass,

the impossibility causes no little astonishment to those who, like ourselves,live in the era o knowledge and techno-science, an era where theory hasspecialized, spread around, and reached a status o unquestionable valid-ity and o obvious assumption. Heidegger adopts rom the beginning astrange stance: He does not deliver a work or the purposes o the editorialworld, but rather oers pathways,15 voyages through the roads o thinking,

o which SZconstitutes but one. I we are to take this ormal indicationseriously, the notion o philosophy as a practice, as an executive activity,ought to be maintained. Philosophy as philosophizing is, in a way, peripa-

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Janus Head 323tetic: It does not spare the reader rom the arduousness o walking the pathwith his own eet. But the act that there is a path does not imply that it

has been traced beorehand, since, in Machados16 words, there really is nopath; the path is made by walking.17

A phenomenology o the unapparent, which could be regarded asmere gibberish i not explored properly, states some demands rom whichthe aorementioned immanent reading must begin. Te rst one relates tothe diculty o stating a thesis, a positive utterance that is not a crystal-lized product o some doctrine. Te work under this complexity could beconceived o as a late product o the activity that gave birth to it: Philoso-phizing. Tis is probably what Heidegger is pointing out when he assertsthat we should not make our work easier than that o those who precededus. Hence, we should not take or granted that there has been actual think-ing in the works o philosophical schools or movements. What there is, imuch, are these schools and philosophical directions. And this should leadone to meditate on the nature o a treatise like SZ. For i we are not dealingwith a work, what do the assertions in the text really mean, i they meananything? We shall discard the notion that Heideggers writings are nothingbut nonsense, and concede that despite the strange use o the phrases (the

repeated use o oxymoronic or impersonal expressions, or the constant ver-balization o nouns), these are grammatically well constructed. It would bebut an absurdity to break grammatical structures or gratuitously twist thelanguage, just with the purpose o seeming avant-garde. Grammar shouldbe used against itsel only i we wish to rid it rom a metaphysically unques-tioned standpoint. Phenomenologically stated, we must rid ourselves romthe natural attitude (as accounted, or example, by Husserl).

Te Problematic Not of Nothingness

Te oregoing points would likely be incomprehensible i one did notdeal with the problem o that not which continues to haunts us in ourlatter denial o doctrine and the work. Is Heidegger oering us in eect anon-doctrine and a non-work? And i that were true, would it mean thatcorrespondingly Heidegger elaborates a kind o non-philosophy or evenworse a doctrine o the end o philosophy?18 On the not o nothingness,

Heidegger has uttered the ollowing words in 1949:

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Te nothing is the not o beings and is thus being experienced romthe perspective o beings. Te ontological dierence is the not be-

tween beings and being. Yet just as being, as the not in relation tobeings, is by no means a nothing in the sense o a nihil negativum, sotoo the dierence, as the not between beings and being, is in no waymerely the gment o a distinction made by our understandingensrationis. (1998: 97).

Te not about which we talk is not anihil negativum, that is, is not a sim-ple nothing out o nothingness, but at the same time is not something. Be-cause that which is worth thinking is precisely that dierential not, whatwe are striving ater is neither an object nor a non-object. When he talkscritically about an internal meditation o the work, Bourdieualthoughhe does not make it explicitis perhaps reerring to an expression due toFriedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, who in his commentary on SZin twovolumes (c. 1987 and 2005) coins the phrase textimmanente Auslegung:[Die textimmanente Auslegung] hlt sich auf derselben Erfahrungsebene, aufder SuZ ausgearbeitet ist. Es gehrt zu ihrer hermeneutischen Aufgabenstellung,mit dem ext auch die ihm eigene Besinnungsebene auszulegen (1987: XIV).

But this does not mean, as Bourdieu tends to think (smacking by theway o a petty understanding o reading and interpreting), that we wantto dehistorize the Heideggerian text so as to dissociate it o its historicalcontext. And maybe because that which is historical, the truely historical,cannot be accounted or by means o the methods o historical research, orthese qua theory imply at the same time an abstract dehistorization. Andthis is indeed one o the lessons that one can learn rom a textimmanente

Auslegung oSZ.

SZs hermeneutical Aufgabenstellung and, in correspondence withit, its Erfahrungs- and Besinnungsebene, without which every reception isineective (and does not do any harm to that supposedly Heideggerianphilosophy, which there isnt), is mostly concerned with ontological dier-ence. Tis is how the argument goes: It is precisely because being has beentraditionally conused with beings that SZ does not intend to expounditsel upon the superb qualities o an ontied being. Every qualication andcharacterization can be predicated o something. But i it is being what one

is dealing with, not with an entity whatsoever, it is worth thinking whatactually can be said o being i we are not to all in the aorementionedontication. Depending on what readers conclude, they can choose to view

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Janus Head 325SZin one o the ollowing ways: Either Heidegger deals with being in thetraditional sense o the expression and he thereore isas an inexact con-

temporary reception would holdthe thinker who restored the rights oontology, or, instead, and as we would urge, he simply does not deal withbeing (as long as the o pertaining to thinking o being is understood inthe objective sense o the genitive, which is how the metaphysical traditioninterpreted the task). We have to be clear on this: Te FragestellungoSZis not what being is, or that was the question o metaphysics, which Hei-degger radically enough traces rom Parmenides to Nietzsche.

But what, then, is the question that SZputs into question? I one isto start o rom that Besinnungsebene or rom the same meditative levelo the text, one would have to grant that this question can be inexact or,properly understood, the question does not question anything, it is nota what that which appears questioned in the question. And the key tounderstand this rather paradoxical issue appears in the rst page o theHeideggerian most amous treatise, the prologue in heaven, with whichthe text opens. It is no doubt a strange proem, but all the strangeness thatarouses rom what is being dealt with in SZis due to the simple act that,in a way, it is not possible to be dealt with, it is, as it were, something un-handleable: In SZwe are indeed beore an introduction to the athematical.

And this non-topical is what rightly deserves the name o the hermeneuti-cal: Not mere being, nor beings or entities, but the being o beings, that is,the sense o being, beings with a view to their being, which cannot appearas something, nor can it become a theme in the strict sense o the word. Insome way, and let us make recourse to graphical assistance, Heidegger doesnot attempt to do philosophy or non-philosophy, but philosophy whichdoes not deal with being, but with being.19

SZ, as is widely known, did not exceed the orm o a ragment. Andon this regard one must agree with Leyte (c. 2005) that the act that thetreatises project (as such announced in 8) did not accomplish its expecta-tions20 is itsel a basic lesson that must be understood in advance, in orderor a proper reception o the work to take place. SZhas been let behind asa ragment and its project has not been carried out as it was promised, butthe orm o incompleteness suggests a deect when it turns out to be thatperhaps it is an intrinsic quality pertaining to its own question, because

incomplete can express the proper nature o a philosophical work thatcannot appear as doctrine (Leyte, 2005: 62-63). What one must under-stand is that SZ, as such the rst pathmark o the Heideggerian Denkweg

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(preceded by intense rehearsals to nd die Sache selbst and the languageproper to it in Heideggers early lectures in Freiburg 1919-1923 and Mar-

burg 1923-1928),21

stands as a work whose appropriate comprehension iseven unavoidable and urgent to adequately tackle the immense philosophi-cal enterprise that was undertaken by our thinker.

Let us just depart rom the same purpose that Heidegger adscribes toits treatise: No reply to the question o being, no correction o the mistakespurportedly assumed by the ontological tradition But only: o elaboratein its concreteness the question o the meaning o being. But what is oneto understand by this elaboration? Perhaps a phenomenological descriptiono that meaning which, in the meantime, the ontological tradition has putaside, that is to say, what is needed is a phenomenological description othe already mentioned negativity o the not o nothingness. Tere is nodoubt that we stand beore an enterprise o negative nature, in the sensethat it does not promise any corrections or any kind o salvation.22 Te or-getulness o being, which is always suggested in the traditional insistencetowards the non-dierentiation between being and beings, is not a humanerror i by that is meant the lack o orce or talent on behal o the greatthinkers o the past.

Tat which Heidegger has carried out in SZis nothing less than the at-tempt to think o desert against the desert (an expression that we take romLeyte, see 2005). But it is not about thinking o desert, as it were, outsideo it, refecting upon it, as i such a move were possible. We think o des-ert against the desert rom within the desert, and that should mean thatwe are to think the not o nothingness rom within the same ontologicaltradition that enguls us: nihilism. And by nihilism we mean the historicalmetaphysical event which insistently prevents us rom thinking when, pre-

tentiously enough, it is suggested that here there is nothing to think about.It is something what we want to know about, that is to say, we do not wantto know anything about nothing, because: Te nothingwhat else canit be or science but an outrage and a phantasm? (Heidegger, 1998: 84).

Notes

*A somewhat dierent version o this paper was rst published in Spanish

as Pensar el Desierto contra el Desierto: Estrategias Prolegomenales paraLeer Ser y iempo de Heidegger. A Parte Rei (Spain). No. 65, September2009, pp. 1-13. URL:

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Janus Head 327pd>. Te earlier drat in English was read and commented by Michael

Johndu and Cosima Herter. I deeply appreciate their substantial sugges-

tions o thematic and stylistic nature. I must also thank Marcela Hernn-dez, whose assistance in translation was very helpul.1. Herman Mrchen recalls the occasion when Heidegger showed his Mar-burg students a sample o this oreword: Wordlessly, expectantly, like achild showing o his avorite secret toy, he let us see a galley-proo sheetstraight rom the printer a title page: Being and ime (quoted by Sa-ranski, 1997: 174).2. See On the Very Idea o a Conceptual Scheme, 1974. In: Davidson,1984.3. According to this, the easy assertion that SZ demonstrates that themeaning o being is time is overtly inadequate. SZdoes not prove or dem-onstrate anything. Let us just recall what is said about this in the prologue:Our provisional aim is the interpretation o time as the possible horizonor any understanding whatsoever o being (SZPrologue: 1), that is, it isan aim that has to be proven and that here is posed as merely provisional.4. It is nothing but not because it is, as it were, nothing out o nothingor nothing at all. It is nothing rather because (as is well suggested in the

English term) it is not anything at all: no-thing. Properly conceived, themeaning o being is not a nothing o nothing but a nothing that belongsto being.5. Although this Heideggerian jargon has aroused both controversy andadmiration, one o the original readers o Heideggers language, his ormerstudent Hans-Georg Gadamer, has even gone so ar as to speak o a newexperience o the German language: Sie mag vielleicht der Erfahrung ver-

gleichbar sein, die man seinerzeit an den deutschen Predigten Meister Eckharts

machen konnte und gewi auch an der Sprache Martin Luthers, dessenBibelbersetzung dem Deutschen eine neue Unmittelbarkeit verlieh (GW10:14).6. Here we have in mind o course Nietzsches amous statement in DieGtterdmmerung: Ich frchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch andie Grammatik glauben.7. I owe the conviction that SZconsists in an approach to the non-topicalto two remarkable Spanish Heidegger scholars: Arturo Leyte (see 2005)

and Felipe Martnez Marzoa (see 1999).8. See berwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache.Erkenntnis. 2 (1), 1931.

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328 Janus Head

9. Te, in its own right, Carnapian caricature o Heideggers language canreach unsuspected extremes o banalization: Heidegger stands beore hun-

dreds o students in a lecture hall and proclaims Ill have the spam, spam,spam, baked beans, sausage, and spam. o this, the students rise in raptur-ous applause, as both their existence and their German destiny are revealedto them. Heidegger publishes a book in which he reveals that the humanbrain is like an enormous sh; it is fat and slimy and has gills throughwhich it can see. Tis book is greeted as the prooundest statement o theplace o humanity in the world (Richardson, 2006: 219). On this point,Richardson makes recourse to a sketch perormed by actor erry Jones (onthe BBC Flying Circusshow), a member o cult British comedians MontyPython, in order to draw a comparison between Heideggers language andmerely conusing gibberish. According to Richardson, Heidegger, un-wittingly to be sure, expresses a comedic attitude toward lie in oeringnonsense as his contribution to the world, but he is a terrible comic; hisnonsense is not amusing (2006: 220). And this means: what Heideggersays would be unny and comic were it not stated with the evil intentionso being serious.10. See Proo o an External World. Proceedings o the British Academy,

1939.11. See, or example, what he says in ber Gewissheit: Moore wei nicht,was er zu wissen behauptet, aber es steht fr ihn fest, so wie auch fr mich; esals feststehend zu betrachten, gehrt zur Methode unseres Zweifelns und Un-tersuchens (Wittgenstein, 2000 151).12. Tis assertion should want to be even more radical than the one onceproclaimed by Windelband: Wir drfen nicht Kantianer sein wollen(1909: 22). In several occasions, the Neokantian prevents us rom wishing

to become Kantian in the sense o a mere dogmatic spelling (Buchstabier-ung) o the masters words.13. Saranski indeed subtitles the philosophers biography as Ein Meisteraus Deutschland.14. Te expression Phnomenologie des Unscheinbaren appears in a letterthat Heidegger wrote to R. Munier in 1973. See Marion, 1998: 60.15. Heideggers complete writings display the motive: Wege, nicht Werke,that is, pathways, not works.

16. Here we are alluding to a amous poem by the Spanish poet AntonioMachado (1875-1939): Wanderer, your ootsteps are the road, and noth-ing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By

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Janus Head 329walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the paththat never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road Only wakes

upon the sea.17. In Bourdieus account, on the contrary, Heideggerians are those whoollow the instructions o their master. oo bad or them, then!18. Tis evokes o course Heideggers essayDas Ende der Philosophie unddie Aufgabe des Denkens. See GA 14.19. See, on this same regard, Sallis: Nonphilosophy, in 1990: 15-43.20. Te story o howSZs project complicated itsel is tackled by von Her-rmann (c. 1997).21. Tere are seminal works on Heideggers early university lectures. SeeVan Buren 1994, Kisiel & Van Buren 1994, Kisiel 1995 and 2002, andGander 2006.22. Here come to mind both Heideggers Spiegelinterview and his utter-ance, Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten, and Sloterdijks Nicht gerettet(see his 2001).

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