Speaking The Language of Destiny: Heidegger's Conversation(s)
Speaking The Language of Destiny: Heidegger's Conversation(s)
James M. Magrini
College DuPage, USA
Abstract: This essay offers the reader a unique interpretation of Heidegger’s notion
of authentic destiny as it develops in the Hölderlin lectures and essays written in the
1930s through the 1950s. Ultimately, for Heidegger, the destiny of Germany, and
perhaps beyond, that of humanity, is contingent on the receptivity of a people to the
founding and grounding words of the “poet of poets” Hölderlin, who calls Dasein to
participate in the awakening to a future that is as of yet indeterminate and historical
in the highest degree, wherein, attuned by Hölderlin’s poetry, participants resolutely
anticipate the potential “historical” arrival of Being as destiny.
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1 Ereignis, in basic terms, is associated with the “appropriation” of that which is “appropriately”
Dasein’s own. It might be thought of as the (temporal) event of “en-presenting” and appropriating of,
within the horizon or space of disclosure, the proper historical world and vocation of a culture or
people.
2 Dichtung is a term Heidegger (1993) incorporates in his writings on the work of art and Hölderlin's
poetry. All art, as an event of truth-happening, is in “essence poetry” (p. 197). Dichtung, as the
“essence” of art/poetry, is not limited to the linguistic expression of “poetry,” or poesy. Rather, for
Heidegger, Dichtung represents all creative, projective events of truth’s revelation, and it is “due to
art’s poetic essence (as Dichtung) that, in the midst of beings, art breaks open an open place, in whose
openness everything is other than usual” (p. 197).
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thinking. This move is inspired by the encounter with both Sophocles and Hölderlin,
an encounter that produces some of Heidegger's most rich, fruitful, and difficult
philosophical writings (Zimmerman 1990). The following important questions arise:
What is Heidegger's conception of language as it relates to Hölderlin's poetizing of
Being as historical phenomenon? How does the event of language occur and in what
manner does Hölderlin poetize Dasein's destiny?
Hölderlin poetizes the primal event (Ereignis) of language, which is the gathering
and appropriation of Dasein’s historicality occurring at the moment of the original
“naming” of the gods and all things. When Dasein, attuned and resolute, partakes in
the inaugural moment of Being's coming-to-presence, which is the poetic
"commemoration" of the moment when "time arose and was brought to stand" in the
word, it enters into the originary historical dialogue (Heidegger 2000a, p. 57). "This
distinctive moment, undoubtedly immemorial, is named and commemorated in
Hölderlin's poetry as the time of his poetizing, itself poetized as the moment"
(McNeill, 2006, p. 150). This primal historical event commemorated in Hölderlin's
poetry is the time that humanity became "One" dialogue. This is the Ereignis, the
moment of Temporality when Dasein's world happens through poetic naming in
essential language (Dastur, 1999). Language, as an originary event of naming, brings
the world, the gods, and beings to stand as that which endures, initiating the
singular dialogue that humanity has been since the moment of "torrential time,"
since time temporalized, and "has been broken up (torn) into present, past, and
future" (Heidegger 2000, p. 59). The event of originary language, which expresses the
historical Being of humanity is at once an originary event of Temporality. So, in
Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin, the Ereignis is understood in terms of an original
event of poetizing, an event of language in relation to the time and truth of Being,
which makes possible Dasein's entrance into its proper and uniquely destined
historical time (McNeill 2006; Kisiel 2001).
What this indicates is that for Heidegger, Hölderlin's poetry is at once the thinking
and poetizing of what might be conceived as Dasein’s authentic historical relationship
to Being in terms of its destiny, which unfolds as an ecumenical dialogue concerning
a people’s proper vocation. This so-called “ecumenical dialogue” is inaugurated as
the temporal founding of a historical “world” in the open clearing (truth-happening)
that Hölderlin's poetry makes possible, and the “dialogue is to be conceived not as
communication, but as a fundamental event of our being” (Heidegger 2004, p. 75).
To the point, the “essence” of Hölderlin's poetry lies in its power to show us –
through a gesturing, a pointing that designates and commemorates its own unique
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Ister," the truth of historical dwelling is located in the site of the polis, the site of
Dasein's ethos as heritage, the originary condition for Dasein's historizing, and this
site might be linked to the Earth and the Ereignis. "The polis is that realm and locale
around which everything question-worthy and uncanny turns in an exceptional
sense," and this original site can never be determined by works alone, as it is not
founded via techne (art) or political state founding actions, e.g., with respect to the
Antigone, blood oaths sworn to the polis and ancestral cults of the dead do not bestow
meaning upon the city, rather these ancient customs and practices acquire meaning
and are first legitimized in the original site of the polis (Heidegger 1996, p. 114.).
Heidegger indicates that historicality is determined by the way in which Dasein faces
and appropriates its essence in the Ereignis. Thus, it is necessary to ask the following:
In what manner is Dasein brought (opened) to face its historical essence and the
fundamental ethos of its past having-been?
Focusing on the Greek term pelein, which appears in both Presocratic philosophy
and the archaic poetry of Homer and Hesiod (as the usual word for Being, einai),
Heidegger attempts to understand the manner in which beings come to presence
within this originary site of disclosure, i.e., the context within which they manifest as
this or that amidst the interplay of concealment and unconcealment. The nature of
Dasein emerges in the open site of Being most conspicuously in terms of absence
("Nothing"), and thus holds the potential, or danger, to either remain hidden or
manifest in a frightfully ominous and disturbing manner. The un-homely (deinon)
appears "in such a way that in all its stirring, it nonetheless abides in the
inaccessibility of its essence" (Heidegger 1996, p. 113). In the 1942 “Ister” lecture, the
potential "catastrophe" of Dasein's historizing does not relate to the inevitable
"shattering" of Dasein in the tragic confrontation with Being (as in, for example,
Introduction to Metaphysics - 1935), but rather refers to the ever-present potential of
human life to remain oblivious to its nature or in the inauthentic turn from the deinon,
to flee in the face of its responsibility to its authentic historical nature. Importantly,
in both instances, there exists the risk of losing the historical (originary) site of the
polis, and hence humanity’s destiny.
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highest law that is beyond humans and gods, demonstrates the authentic historical
way of Being in which humanity's relationship to the unsettling nature of the deinon
unfolds authentically through the proper orientation to the "Nothing," in the "here
and now" of the Augenblick. The ever-present threat to Dasein's appropriation of its
historical nature in the site of the Ereignis, the possibility that Dasein might turn
from its essence, is the ultimate tragic threat to historicality (the possibility of an
inauthentic dwelling), which outweighs the import of the factical threat of death. It is
possible to trace the source of the danger present to the disclosure of the deinon to the
language-event, to language itself. For language grants Dasein its time and potential
historicality, but harbors intrinsically a legitimate danger, and as Heidegger believes,
essential language is a double-threat to Dasein, in that it "first exposes humans to the
realm of Being and thereby nonbeing," opening the perilous threat of the loss of
Being, not specifically in terms of Dasein's earthly, or biological, death, but with
regard to the loss of its selfhood, the loss of the historical site and the potential for its
authentic destiny (Heidegger 1996, p. 132).
By stressing the potential danger of Dasein's turning from its essence, in a manner
reminiscent of Being and Time (1927), and yet in terms that clearly outstrip this work,
Heidegger draws the distinction between inauthentic and authentic modes of being
historical. Importantly, the inauthentic relation to Being, and to the essence of Dasein
as unhomely, spawns the misunderstanding of techne (technical knowledge), which
leads to the overestimation of Dasein's power to master the environment
(Zimmerman 1990; Bambach 2003). Misconstruing the deinon in the site of presencing,
in the emergence of finitude, Dasein is without the proper orientation to the
authentic meaning of its nature (in relation to the "Nothing"). Thus, it fails to orient
itself to the saving source of authentic historical Being. Catastrophe, as Heidegger
argues, connotes the sense of blindness and forgetting, as a turning away from
Dasein's historical nature (deinon), which fails to keep "Being in view or in thoughtful
remembrance (Andenken)" (Heidegger 2000a, p. 141).5 When this occurs, the potential
exists for Dasein to become lost in the inauthentic search for the homely, expressed
5 Andenken is a term Heidegger (2000) incorporates in his essay “Remembrance” that indicates a
unique form of thinking, or thought, linked with the sense of authentic remembrance, which is a
thinking-of what has been. However, in distinction to thinking about what is merely past, Andenken is
an intimation or understanding of “what is still coming into presence from afar…a ‘thinking-of’ but in
such a way that it thinks what is yet to come” (109). Andenken, which is both philosophical and poietic,
holds the potential to reveal Dasein’s proper place within those events that are still on the approach
from the indeterminate future. Andenken is linked to Hölderlin’s unique form of poietic thought.
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In the 1954 essay, "...Poetically Man Dwells...," Heidegger reads Hölderlin's "In
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beautiful blue," a poem that speaks the historical dwelling of the poet and Dasein.
The enactment of Dasein's authentic destiny, through understanding its ultimate
potential in relation to "The Godhead," or the powers of the holy Earth, happens by
way of the ever-renewed, ever continued process referred to as “measure-taking.”
Heidegger (2000a) reasons that this poem, “In beautiful blue...,” poetizes the manner
in which Dasein becomes historical through the enactment of its destiny.
Since no authentic measure exists in the world or "on the earth," Dasein arrives at the
poetic essence of its historical dwelling only by way of measuring itself against the
divine, that which is without measure. Hence, the “measure-taking” required is not
a common measure, a qualitative (Cartesian) calculating of some distance in space,
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As stated, the language event (Ereignis), the primal event of Temporality in the
disclosure of Being, opens the potential for Dasein's authentic appropriation of its
historical essence. Destiny unfolds in the continued and ever-renewed process of
Dasein's taking-measure, holding itself in the "dimension," and meting its earthly life
against the primordial source of its Being, the emergence of the holy Earth
(Heidegger 1971). If it is the fate of Dasein to enact its destiny by way of sustaining
an essential relationship to the self-secluding source of its Being, then coming to an
authentic knowledge of its historical nature, and appropriating that nature,
represents a legitimate possibility. In short, Dasein's authentic historicality (as
destiny) presupposes the knowledge of Being. What does Heidegger have to say
about the knowledge of Being that holds the key to Dasein's destiny as the new time
of history? How is this knowledge related to Hölderlin's poetry? With the
understanding that Antigone represents the supreme expression of Dasein as deinon,
as the one who is unhomely and radically uncanny, set within the context of an
authentic historical existence, such questions loom large. Heidegger defines the
Hearth as Being itself, related to the Goddesses Hera and Hestia, it is the site and
locality of "homeliness." Knowledge of the hearth expresses the human relation to
Being and its historical nature. The hearth of a house, from where the fire "burns"
and "radiates," unites heaven and Earth. It is the site in which "the fire has its secure
locale, and this locale, gathers around it all that properly occurs and is bestowed"
(Heidegger 1996, p. 105). Just as the hearth is conceived as a force that draws
everything into the radiant light and warmth of its flames, "wherein beings have
their site and are at home as beings," so too is the polis conceived as a gathering force,
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which, as the originary site of history, manifests "the site of abode of human beings
as historical in the midst of beings" (p. 105). As centre and locale of being-at-home, it
is also the site of deinon (the site of the tragic double-bind), which alone determines
the human's potential for historical Being, as "that potentiality for Being in which the
being of human is fulfilled," which is ultimately Dasein locating its dwelling in the
essential estrangement of the human from its home (p. 110). The potential for the
appropriation of the essence of the deinon emerges directly from Dasein's belonging
to Being, but it manifests itself in cryptic, obscure, and difficult terms, and as stated
earlier, the understanding of the immediate presencing of Dasein's nature in the
disclosure site defies standard modes of human cognition.
The knowledge of Being, which is ultimately a knowledge of the "home" and the
understanding that Dasein's destiny resides in the estrangement from the hearth
(home), is poetic in nature. It is described as a "genuine intuition," which is different
from any other forms of knowledge, and thus is not understood in terms of
calculative thought, episteme (scientific) or techne. For example, whereas Heidegger
links techne primarily with unconcealment, in that it is a form of knowledge that
wrests beings from concealment, he suggests that poetic knowledge of the hearth
should be understood in terms of primordial concealment and finitude. Therefore,
knowledge of the hearth is grounded in the essence of truth as concealment (lethe),
which lies at the heart of unconcealment. Knowledge of the hearth intimates the
concealed essence of truth (aletheia) and it is from the essence of the self-concealing
Earth that Dasein receives the potential for its historical destiny. This unique form of
poetic knowledge, according to Heidegger, knows Being because "it stems from a
belonging to the hearth" (Heidegger 1996, p. 110). Whereas Introduction to
Metaphysics (1935) reads the chorus of Theban elders in the Antigone as affirming the
authentic nature of the deinon through their inauthentic claims, in that the chorus
turns against the uncanniness of the human essence by affirming that one "who is in
this way [namely, as the uncanniest] should be excluded from hearth and council,"
Heidegger's 1942 reading of the Antigone concludes that the chorus possesses the
knowledge of Being, "for the deinon to be able to expel the most uncanny of all beings
from the homely hearth, they must know the hearth itself," the poetic knowledge
springing from the human's belonging to Being (Heidegger 1996, p. 111). Regarding
the one who attempts to be at home through creation, the chorus says:
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In order for Dasein to appropriate its nature as unhomely, the source of its
historical Being, the hearth must be understood. Since Dasein is "uncanny," its
essential nature is unhomely, and its nature can only be determined in relation to the
hearth, the source of Being, the source of homeliness itself, a site from which
authentic Dasein must be excluded. This knowledge that grasps the historical nature
of the human is a phronein, it is a "pointing and meditation that comes from phren,
that is, from the 'heart,' from the innermost middle of human essence itself"
(Heidegger 1996, p. 107). This phronein for Heidegger is poetic and is gleaned
through proximity to the hearth's light and the eternal warmth of its flames, in
which humans have already gathered collectively. Heidegger suggests that this
poetic knowledge is accessible only through the attunement of poetry, and for
Heidegger, this knowledge happens through the Dichtung of Hölderlin, who
poetizes the supreme truth of all gathering and historical dwelling. Above, this
knowledge of the hearth was referred to as a "genuine intimation," a form of
knowledge that gleans the essence of the homely as an indirect intuitive "sign" or
hint into the innermost character of the hearth and Dasein's unique way of belonging
to the innermost center of Being. It is also possible to link this intuitive knowledge
with Hölderlin's form of "poetic" knowing-thinking, which is primarily the
remembering of the belonging to Being, which reveals the authentic orientation to
the hearth and Dasein's historical nature, i.e., the thinking that is Andenken.
Hölderlin is unhomely in the sense of being cast out from dwellings both divine
and human. Therefore, much like us, he must find a home and dwelling in the
knowledge that neither realm will ever provide a permanent port of refuge from his
uncanny fate. Just as Hölderlin appropriates the vocation bestowed by the divinity,
and with it, the burdensome role of living and poetizing as one who is supremely
uncanny, so too must Antigone acquiesce to her destiny, which is decreed by a
superior power, the law that is beyond both humans and gods. "Antigone is the
poem of becoming homely in being unhomely,” and in suffering the deinon, the
human's unhomely essence, she testifies to the authentic historicality of Dasein
(Heidegger 1996, p. 107). Authentic destiny presupposes the fittingness of humanity
as determined by the law of Being historical. “Antigone’s story begins with her
taking knowingly upon herself the necessity of downgoing, her relation to the deinon”
(McNeill 2000, p. 183). Her authentic lot is to suffer and bear the unhomely nature
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that she is (pathein to deinon), and this strange, unhomely essence “nevertheless
belongs, in an unequivocal manner, to the wordly dwelling of human beings” (p.
184). The phrase “pathein to deinon” indicates that Antigone’s fated lot as Being-in-
the-world is to suffer and undergo the terrible. What Antigone takes upon herself
when appropriating her historical essence, the human essence, “is that which first
bestows ground and necessity upon the distinction of the deed and the priority of
blood,” and the "ground" of her historical existence manifests and is appropriated in
the originary site of history's locale (p. 184).
Heidegger links Hölderlin's poetizing of human destiny with the ancient festivals
of Greece, because his poetry inspires what Heidegger calls the grounding
attunement of das Festliche ("The Festival"), which is the most primordial form of
human attunement that Heidegger identifies, more primordial than Angst (McNeill
2006). Whereas Angst reveals world as world, the overarching system of relations
(world), world acquires true historical meaning only when Earth rises up through
the work to authenticate the world. The Festival mood reveals world in its authentic
relation to Being, wherein participants are transported in a state of ecstatic rapture,
outside of their everyday ways of being, as a profound sense of wonder permeates
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their lives. The Ereignis is the paradigmatic moment when the holy Earth rises to
engulf and transform the everyday world of Dasein. Hölderlin's poetry not only
inspires this festive mood, it is also born of it, for The Festival is the supreme
encounter of the gods and men, the wedding festival, "from which there issues the
birth of those who stand between men and gods and endure this 'between,'" namely,
the demigods, the poets like Hölderlin (McNeill 2006, p. 150).
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It is not the return to the classical Greek paradigm of art or the return of the
Olympian pantheon that Heidegger seeks for Germany. To reiterate, he is not
interested in a classical Greek renaissance, a representation of ancient Greece in
modern dress, in the form of a decadent, neo-classicism, an aesthetic model which
would have amounted to an inauthentic facade of genuine culture. Such a flawed
ideal, formed the basis of his ongoing criticism of National Socialism (Caputo 1990;
Zimmerman 1990). Rather, Heidegger works toward a deeper understanding of their
primordial encounter with Being as a sacred event, which represents Germany's true
link to the Greeks with the potential for "the other (German) beginning." This is
because he seeks a retrieval and beginning that is always unique, new, and singular,
in that it is related specifically to the authentic possibilities of a historical people in
relation to Being. Presumably, it is possible to locate the greatness of the classical
Greeks in their ability to successfully appropriate the heritage poetized by Homer,
who first brought the Olympians gods to form and word in response to the archaic
Greeks' heritage (the fire from heaven), and this notion of authentic "Greek" heritage
appears to be what Heidegger insists is entirely lacking in the spiritually-deprived
milieu of modern Europe. If Germany's destiny is to be an authentic world-founding
occurrence, the Germans must be opened, via Hölderlin's poetry, to the sense of the
holy to motivate and authenticate their gift for giving form to their world through
the "clarity of presentation."
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Despite Homer's poetizing the fate and historicality of the West, Heidegger claims
that the archaic Greeks lacked what the classical Greeks possessed in abundance,
namely, the gift for "clarity of presentation," e.g., the inspired, creative activity that
brought Being to shine in their works of architecture, poetry, and politics. In
Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister", Heidegger (1996) emphasizes the foreignness of the
Greeks to the Germans (and vice versa), stressing that the Germans must become
homely in a different manner than either the classical or archaic Greeks. "Hölderlin
recognizes that the historicality of those two humankinds is intrinsically different."
(p. 124). Just as the Greeks became homely in a unique way, so too must the
Germans become homely in a way that is unique to their culture. However, in order
to historize, appropriating what is rightfully the tradition and authentic heritage of
both Greeks and Germans, "the Germans must be struck by the fire from the
Heavens," and this fire from heaven is the heritage they share, the relationship to the
holy that has been lost and covered-over (p. 136). For only if the Germans are struck
by the ancient holy fire will they move toward "the correct appropriation of their
own gift for presentation" (p. 136). Heidegger links the incessant modern drive for
technological mastery of the world with the German's alienation from their proper
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relationship to the Earth, and thus they require a poet such as Hölderlin to reawaken
the spiritual sense of the holy, to reconnect the culture with the holy fire that once
burned so brightly in the ancient skies above Homer and Hesiod. Hölderlin's poetry
attempts to reawaken the sense of the holy, the awe and wonder in the presence of
the divine Earth, and it is only through his poetry that the law of history manifests
itself, and this law manifests itself only to the poet.
Thus, it is Hölderlin's poetry that holds within it the fate of Germany and the
West. However, as Heidegger writes in the 1934, a pressing concern, which is
reiterated by Heidegger in 1942, Hölderlin's poetry has not yet been understood. The
proper heirs and preservers of his poetry have not yet arrived, and so apparently
Germany of the 1930s and 1940s will not benefit from the power of his word.
Heidegger writes in the 1934-35 lecture course, foreshadowing his extreme
dissatisfaction with the National Socialism, "Hölderlin's poems become more
inexhaustible, greater, stranger from year to year - and cannot be classified
anywhere in an ultimate sense, they still lack their genuine historical and spiritual
realm” (Heidegger 2004, p. 25). Hölderlin, in the later lectures, undoubtedly assumes
the role of poet of the future, of the new futural paradigm of art that will be
inaugurated by a genuine historical response to his poetry. Gadamer (1990, 1999),
interpreting Hölderlin as a future poet, argues that Hölderlin belongs to neither an
idealistic, bygone age nor the immediate present of Heidegger's Germany, rather
Hölderlin as a poet belonged “to a future which could usher in an overcoming of
metaphysics and the present forgetfulness of Being" (Gadamer 1990, p. 147). Thus, it
is possible that Heidegger is expanding the scope of Dichtung and the potential for
the destiny beyond Germany in the 1940s, suggesting perhaps a position with global
potential in which Hölderlin will someday inspire future poets of Dasein and Being
to found and ground a people's destiny on a global scale, through the respectful,
awe-inspiring relationship to Being that has been forgotten (or more correctly, never
experienced) by Germany and the West in modern times.
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This “dawning new beginning” is the language-event in which Dasein receives its
new time as that which is founded through its participation in and preservation of
the poetry of Hölderlin. As shown, this is first made possible through Hölderlin's
measured relation to the holy Earth, which is communicated via the poetry to the
Dasein of the people. It is through Hölderlin's poetizing that Dasein is equipped to
enact its destiny through a process of measuring itself against that which Hölderlin's
poetry first makes manifest, his language first reveals by “naming” anew and again,
the Earth. Human finitude is thus meted against the divine in order to first arrive at
its proper historical measure and fittingness for its destiny.
James M. Magrini
REFERENCES
Bambach (2003) Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Caputo, J. (1990). “Heidegger’s Revolution: An Introduction to An Introduction to
Metaphysics,” in: J. Risser (ed.) Heidegger Toward the Turn: Essays on the Works of the
1930s. Albany: SUNY Press.
Dastur, F. Heidegger and the Question of Time. Trans. D. Pettigrew and F. Raffoul. New
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