Vincent Blok on Heidegger and the gestalt.
The problem for Heidegger is this: in the metaphysical
tradition, being is understood out of beings (beings as such), whereas
Heidegger tries to think being as such. When Heidegger, at the same time,
states that being has to establish itself in a being, then the question arises as
to how this established being is differentiated from the metaphysically understood
beingness of beings (i.e., ontological indifference).
Our discussion of Heidegger’s destructed concept of the gestalt in the previous
sections made clear that it cannot be understood as the beingness of
beings. And yet, later Heidegger came to see that he could not withdraw his
concept of the gestalt completely from this tradition, because it is inherently
related to beings and thinks being out of beings. For instance, when Heidegger
in his Rectorial Address is talking about the task before the Germans of
finding their identity and when this identity can be found in a gestalt of the
German people, then it is not clear how this gestalt is differentiated from
an onto-typology, or from the beingness (gestalt) of beings (Germans). As
long as the truth of being has to establish itself in a gestalt, being as such
is not only thought of in relation with beings, but also out of beings, and
we are then incapable of differentiating it from the beingness of beings.
That is why Heidegger, in his Contributions, finally rejects the establishment
of the truth in a gestalt and attempts to think the truth of being without
beings: “Mindfulness transports the man of the future into that ‘in-between’
in which he belongs to being and yet, amidst beings, remains a stranger.”
Because the concept of the gestalt is, according to Heidegger, inherently
bound up with beings, the departure of establishment implies also the departure
of the gestalt.
P. 99
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