What is the sense of this es geschieht etwas, something/it happens? Later we are told that "the sense of the something means precisely: 'what is experienceable in any sense.'" Heidegger was here critically deepening the historical heterology of being that he had developed in his qualifying dissertation and in his 1915-16 essay on history. It was then that he first equated the "primal category" and "primal element" of being (ens) with "the something in any sense," "what is experienceable in any sense," and "givenness." The upshot of our analysis of Heidegger's heterology was the following: The indifference of something (being) is marked by a transcendental inclination into heterothesis (alterity, difference) and haecceity (historical such-here-now-ness, individual-being). The givenness or "there is/it is given" (es gibt) of real being means that it is given as an Other that is historically such-here-now, at this particular time (jeweilig). In relation to its enactment by historical consciousness, the something of a futural telos of noematic sense and value that intentionally points into its fulfillment and analogical differentiation within the alterity and haecceity of historical being (the Umwelt, individual persons, groups, institutions, cultural worldviews, epochs, historical Ereignisse such as the birth of Christ, famines, wars). The something is a dynamic analogical identity-in-difference similar to "a bundle of rays flowing together in a single point." But we must also be aware that, by sharply distinguishing the pretheoretical something from the theoretical logical something, Heidegger's KNS 1919 course criticized the metaphysical elements in his earlier treatment of the something, namely, its identification with "object in any sense" and ultimately with atemporal "validity" and "value," as well as the characterization of its enactments in history as "objectifications." All this still involved the theorization that leads to deworlding, deliving, and dehistoricizing. Regarding the notion of validity, Heidegger asked: "Is this a founded, even extremely founded phenomenon?...Validity is ultimately a phenomenon constituted by its subject matter, presupposing not only intersubjectivity but further historical consciousness as such!"

P. 273-274

¶ 9:44 AM