Ten Theses on Heidegger

7. What brings about Welt/Lichtung/Da is human finitude - the hidden, withdrawn lack that generates the open.

a. What generates (zeitigt) and sustains the open is the finitude or lack-in-full-self-presence that defines the human essence as Zeitlichkeit. This lack is responsible for the fact that human being is "im-perfect" (not pure presence but pres-absence), a finite openness within which things are known not with the immediacy of intellectual intuition but only via the indirection of Seinsverständnis (cf. GA 3, 280.30-3). One's finitude/lack clears a "place of dif-ference" wherein synthesis becomes possible. This "place" is Welt/Lichtung/Da as the realm of possible relation ("as"), thanks to which entities can be taken as being this or that and thus can be understood as what and how they currently are. Our groundless finitude grounds the "e-mergence" (a-letheia, Wahrheit) of all forms of being.

b. Insofar as human finitude/lack is a non-presence, Heidegger describes it as "hidden," i.e., as the usually overlooked lethe or mystery that constitutes the essence of Da-sein (das vergessene Geheimnis des Daseins GA 9, 195.23).

c. Insofar as human finitude/lack is a relative absence, Heidegger likewise describes it as a withdrawing from presence (der Entzug or das Sichentziehende: GA 8, 10.30, 11.12, 13, 16, 17).

d. The hiddenness/withdrawal that is our finitude "appropriates" or "draws" us into opened-ness and thus into the possibility of understanding the current being of whatever we encounter. Our finitude is our appropriation into opened-ness. (Der Entzug ist des Daseins: GA 65, 293.9; Entzug ist Ereignis: GA 8, 10.30 with 11.6-11.7.)

e. Thus the Vor-frage nach der Wahrheit selbst -- the question about the whence and whereby of emergence itself -- finds its answer in human finitude.

Glossary:
Zeitlichkeit: temporality.
Seinsverständnis: understanding of being.
Wahrheit: truth.
Welt/Lichtung/Da: described in this earlier post.
der Entzug: the withdrawal. Discussed yesterday.
das Sichentziehende: the self-withdrawing.

[Thesis 8]  ¶ 9:42 PM