6 Forgetfulness, history and metaphysics

Heidegger sees a strong connection between the forgetting of disclosure-as-such, the history of the dispensations of being, and metaphysics.

Forgetting disclosure-as-such. Because disclosure-as-such is intrinsically hidden (this is what is meant by the mystery), it is usually overlooked. When the mystery is overlooked, human being is ‘fallen’, that is, aware of entities as being-thus-and-so, but oblivious of what it is that ‘gives’ being to entities. Fallenness is forgetfulness of the mystery. Another term for fallenness is ‘errancy’, which conveys the image of Dasein ‘wandering’ among entities-in-their-being without knowing what makes their presence possible. Since disclosure-as-such is sometimes called ‘being itself’, fallenness is also called ‘the forgetfulness of being’.

However, disclosure-as-such need not be forgotten. It is possible, in resolution, to assume one’s mortality and become concretely aware of disclosure-as-such in its basic state of hiddenness. Such awareness does not undo the intrinsic hiddenness of disclosure-as-such or draw it into full presence. Rather, one accepts the concealment of being itself (this is called ‘letting being be’) by resolutely accepting one’s appropriation by absence.

The history of the dispensations of being. Heidegger’s discussions of the ‘history of being’ sometimes verge on the anthropomorphic, and he often uses etymologies that are difficult to carry over into English. Nevertheless, his purpose in all this is clear: to spell out the world-historical dimensions of fallenness.

As we have seen, disclosure-as-such ‘gives’ the being of entities while the ‘giving’ itself remains hidden; and this happens only in so far as Dasein is appropriated by absence. When one forgets the absence that appropriates Dasein, and thus forgets the hidden giving that brings forth the being of entities, fallenness and errancy ensue. Fallen Dasein then focuses on the given (entities-in-their-being) and overlooks the hidden giving (disclosure-as-such). None the less, the hidden giving still goes on giving, but now in a doubly hidden way: it is both intrinsically hidden and forgotten. When the hiddenness is forgotten, a disclosure is called a ‘dispensation’ (Geschick) of being. The word connotes a portioning-out that holds something back. A certain form of the being of entities is dispensed while the disclosing itself remains both hidden and forgotten.

In German, ‘dispensation’ (Geschick) and ‘history’ (Geschichte) have their common root in the verb schicken, ‘to send’. Playing on those etymologies, Heidegger elaborates a ‘history’ of being, based on the ‘sendings’ or ‘dispensations’ of being. (The usual translations of Geschick as ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ are not helpful here.) In Heidegger’s view each dispensation of being defines a distinct epoch in the history of thought from ancient Greece down to today. He calls the aggregate of such dispensations and epochs the ‘history of being’. Because the whole of these dispensations and epochs is correlative to fallenness, Heidegger seeks to overcome the history of being and return to an awareness of the hidden giving.

Heidegger believes the parameters of each epoch in the history of being can be glimpsed in the name that a major philosopher of the period gave to the being of entities in that age. A non-exhaustive list of such epoch-defining notions of being includes: idea in Plato, energeia in Aristotle, act in Aquinas, representedness in Descartes, objectivity in Kant, Absolute Spirit in Hegel, and will to power in Nietzsche. What characterizes each such epoch is (1) an understanding of being as some form of the presence of entities and (2) an oblivion of the absence that bestows such presence. None the less, even when forgotten the absence is never abolished, and thus traces of it remain in the various dispensations. Therefore, in studying the texts of classical philosophy Heidegger searches for and retrieves the unexpressed absence (the ‘unsaid’) that hides behind what the text actually expresses (the ‘said’).

Metaphysics. The various ways that presence or being has been dispensed, while absence has been overlooked, are called in their entirety ‘metaphysics’. Heidegger argues that metaphysics as a philosophical position began with Plato and entered its final phase with Nietzsche.

The Greek philosophers who preceded Socrates and Plato were, in Heidegger’s view, pre-metaphysical in so far as they had at least a penumbral awareness of disclosure-as- such and at least named it (Heraclitus, for example, called it logos, alēthēia, and physis). However, none of these thinkers thematically addressed disclosure-as-such or understood the correlative notions of ek-sistence and Dasein. Heidegger calls the penumbral awareness of disclosure-as-such among archaic Greek thinkers the ‘first beginning’. And he hoped that a ‘new beginning’ would follow the end of metaphysics. If the first beginning was not yet metaphysical, the new beginning will be no longer metaphysical. Heidegger considered his own work a preparation for that new beginning.

But metaphysics persists. The history of the dispensations of being has reached its fullness in the present epoch of technology. As Heidegger uses the word, ‘technology’ refers not to hardware or software or the methods and materials of applied science. Rather, it names a dispensation in the history of metaphysics, in fact the final one. It names the way in which entities-in-their-being are disclosed today.

Heidegger maintains that in the epoch of technology entities are taken as a stockpile of matter that is in principle completely knowable by human reason and wholly available for human use. With this notion metaphysics arrives at its most extreme oblivion of disclosure-as-such. In our time, Heidegger says, the presence of entities has become everything, while the absence that brings about that presence has become nothing. He calls this nil-status of absence ‘nihilism’.

Overcoming metaphysics. None the less, Heidegger sees a glimmer of light in the dark epoch of nihilism. In this final dispensation of metaphysics, the hidden giving does not cease to function, even when it is completely forgotten. It continues dispensing presence – paradoxically even the nihilistic presence which obscures the absence that gives it. Because the hidden giving goes on giving even when it is forgotten, we can still experience it today (in a mood not unlike dread) and retrieve it. This recovery of world-disclosive absence requires resolution or, as Heidegger now calls it, ‘the entrance into Ereignis’. To enter Ereignis today is to experience a different kind of nihil (‘nothing’) from the one that defines nihilism. The absence that bestows presence is itself a kind of ‘nothing’ (not-a-thing). This absence is no entity, nor can it be reduced to the being of any specific entity or be present the way an entity is. That is why it is so easily overlooked. Its ‘nothingness’ is its intrinsic hiddenness.

To enter Ereignis is to become aware of and to accept the disclosive nihil that rescues one from nihilism. Thereupon, says Heidegger, metaphysics as the history of the dispensations of being ceases and a new beginning takes place – at least for those individuals who achieve authenticity by way of resolution. But metaphysics will continue for those who remain inauthentic, because dispensation is correlative to fallenness.

Summary. The forgetting of disclosure-as-such is metaphysics. Metaphysics knows entities-in-their-being but ignores the very giving of that being. The aggregate of the epochs of metaphysics is the history of the dispensations of being. The history of these dispensations culminates in the epoch of technology and nihilism. But world-disclosive absence can still be retrieved; and when it is retrieved, it ushers in (at least for authentic individuals) a new beginning of ek-sistence and Dasein.