Certain English words intimate something of this: belonging, fitting and be-fitting, and the very fresh word 'enowning.' Historically we have seen the German Ereignis come into English as 'appropriation. Responding to what enowns me in Heidegger's thinking, I respectfully stay away from the word appropriation. And this for two reasons: (i) As many words that derive from Latin tend to do, the word carries a certain abstraction with it, thus cancelling out or hiding the dynamic engagement aspect of what Heidegger is saying with the word. (ii) If the English word appropriation works in some sense (the OED says that 'to appropriate' means, among other things, 'to make something over to someone as his own') -- because Ereignis is then a granting of the own -- it still carries connotations of ownership/possession and of something passing from subject to object, or vice versa.

Then there is the usage of the English word event -- sometimes capitalized: Event. If Ereignis gets its bearing from eigen and äugen, then what it says is not 'event,' which has nothing to do with eigen or äugen. Whereas this is the English word that translates the German word in common usage, it is altogether clear that this is not the word that Heidegger is saying with 'Ereignis.' Unfortunately the word event names a static idea, a one-time singularity, and even a kind of (metaphysical) presence. This is clearly not on Heidegger's docket.

As I see it, the word en-owning takes care of the deficiencies in these other options. It is probably true to say that Heidegger's own use of the word Ereignis requires a new, fresh way of saying this dynamic in English. It is certainly true that, in many situations but especially in this one, we cannot expect of a single English word the whole of the necessary work of philosophical thinking/saying, as if once translated, the word leaves behind its original saying.

Pp. 173-174

¶ 8:36 PM