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Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (Studies in Continental Thought)

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I am fluent in German and own a copy of the Beitraege and am reading the English together with the German. Even the translation of "Ereignis" as "Enonwing" is problematic, since "eignen" in the German means to make fit or suited or appropriate to. Krell's translation of Ereignis as appropriation or event of appropriation is much better, since it captures both owning and fitting. Besides, the accompanying "er" words (such as erdacht) often get translated in a bizarre way (erdacht becomes the horrible "enthought"), so that the parallelism becomes ludicrous to maintain. I wish the editor John Sallis had taken more of a hand in editing this translation, since it's really important. In the (self-justifying, historically barren)introduction, the translators go on and on about Heidegger's "syntax" and "ambiguity" in a way which is embarassing, since Heidegger would question a style of translation which seeks to isolate syntax and minimize ambiguity. So they also show themselves to be well outside the spirit of Heidegger's thought. In the end, if you don't read German, I would still highly recommend this translation since you can get discern the main thrusts of Heidegger's involvement with the question within it and it is THE essential text which joins his later work. But for the subtlety and grace of Heidegger's thought enacted in English, we are still waiting for a suitably gifted translator, except perhaps for Sallis' Essence of Truth translation. Once again, it is a pity he did not find the time to involve himself more with this translation.

This difficult text is essential to understanding Heidegger's later thought -- cryptic, rich, provocative. Unfortunately, you should keep a copy of the German by your side at all times, because the translation is very quirky and sometimes unreliable. Some choices are nice (such as "be-ing" for "Seyn"). Others are just plain weird. For example: archaic language (lots of "untos" and "yeas"); nongrammatical usages ("gift" as a verb, "heretofore" as an adjective); silly words with embarrassing connotations ("cleavage," "charming-moving-unto"); and a bewildering lack of definite articles. Heidegger's German is strange, but not this ridiculous. Is it worth suffering through the translation for the sake of the thinking? I vote yes.

Heidegger's "Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning" is generally regarded as a second masterpiece, following his unfinished Being and Time, in which he reworked some of the major ideas that were explored in the earlier text. If you are interested in a good scholarly understanding Heidegger via a series of landmark texts that will lead you to the core of Heidegger's thought then this is definitely a must-read.

The Contributions, written after the famous Heideggerian "Turn" and after his fateful involvement with the "inner truth and greatness of the movement" is of a level of sophistication that is unmatched. Arranged in terms of a series of distinct but interrelated parts, the text overcomes the problems encountered in Being and Time and takes off thinking to new heights.

Contributions to Philosophy is, in my opinion, Heidegger's most important work. It is not nearly as accessible as Being and Time (and to speak of Being and Time as in any way accessible will sound ridiculous to many) but compared to Contributions, Being and Time is a model of clarity. The difficulty of the text is not made any easier by this particular translation. In fact, it is made much more difficult. The translators of this work decided to invent English neologisms for many of the most important words that Heidegger uses which are not neologisms in German. In other words, the German reader reading this text will be encountering ordinary German words, albeit used in a different way, but still understandable to some degree in terms of their ordinary connotations. The English words that Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly use to translate those words are entirely made up. This makes the text virtually unintelligible in places. It is not unlike someone who simply decided to invent their own language and then went around and expected people to be able to understand what they were saying. There is a new translation on the way so if you are not in any immediate hurry to read this book it might be worthwhile waiting for the new translation: Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event (Studies in Continental Thought).

If you are in a hurry it is certainly possible to make sense out of this translation. The book is not impossible, it does not quite degenerate into total non-sense, but the task of interpreting is made extremely difficult. It is for that reason that a companion to this text is absolutely essential. In my opinion the best choice is The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy by Richard Polt. Richard Polt does a fantastic job of making the Contributions accessible and philosophically exciting. Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (Studies in Continental Thought) by Daniela Vallega-Neu is also quite good but not quite as accessible as Polt. And while I have only read a couple of the essays in the collection Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: seems like a decent companion as well. Another very interesting book that deals with the Contributions is Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (Studies in Continental Thought) by Miguel de Beistegui. Beistegui's interpretation is, in my opinion, not an entirely faithful interpretation, and it is not clear that Beistegui intended it as such, but it is an extremely interesting reading of the Contributions nevertheless (actually only the first half is about the Contributions, the second half is about Deleuze).

Contributions is really an amazing book. It is not really possible to offer a summary of this work. It really has to be read and it has to be read in the light of Heidegger's other writings. It is particularly important to have read Being and Time and Introduction to Metaphysics (Nota Bene) before reading this book. It would also be very helpful to have read Heidegger's essay The Question Concerning Technology. Contributions develops themes from all of those works. It develops the notion of Dasein from Being and Time and offers a fundamentally new interpretation. It develops the notion of the oblivion of being from Introduction to Metaphysics and it develops the notion of machination from the essay on technology. The goal of the work is to get human beings to make the leap into Da-sein, the site where it is possible to make a decision about be-ing, and open up the possibility of a transition between the first and the other beginning. This will sound unintelligible to those who have not read this book and to fully explain what all of this means would require a degree of unpacking that is not really possible in an amazon review but if you have the patience, and you have a good companion (like the Polt book) it is certainly possible to unpack that statement, and when you do you will find a vast field of philosophical riches waiting for you.

All I can really say is that this book is absolutely essential for anyone interested in Heidegger. It is impossible, in my opinion, to get a sense of Heidegger's entire project without reading this book. If you focus on Being and Time you will wind up thinking that Heidegger was an existentialist primarily concerned with reinterpreting the being of human beings. That was basically my interpretation of Heidegger for a number of years but reading Contributions (along with some of Heidegger's other essays) changed that. The book is difficult but it is worth the effort. If you have some understanding of the other Heidegger works I mentioned you should definitely pick up Polt's book and start patiently making your way through this book. Actually it does not have to be read in order and I think the section on Grounding is really the central section so you might consider starting there which is actually what I did. Good luck!

I have only begun to study this book, but I bring to it 35 years of living with awareness of Heidegger's work and struggling with many of his texts. So far it seems to me that this work is a struggle to do what he confessed he could not do--overcome metaphysics or cross-over to a second beginning.

My German is so primitive that I could never read this text in its original language. I see that saves me from feeling a need to compete with this translation. I am thankful for small blessings. The unique poetic vocabulary invented by H to avoid metaphysics and promote the cross-over presents a challenge.

The unique vocabulary by Emad and Maly means I must not depend on solitary words, even while H is at such pains to set them in context. (On continued study of this book, I am increasingly admiring of the translation, with the picyune exception of the use of English words with "-ness" and "-hood" that typically shout *metaphysics.*)

As with Sein und Zeit which I first read about 30 years ago and then reread 5 years ago, I can only resort to a developing appreciation of this volume. It is hard work for me.

Yet I should not want to die without even a meager acquaintance, as mine is, with our age's version of Aristotle. Even he was libeled for political incompetence. Opportunities such as are offered in this volume do not come around everyday.

Upon beginning the reading I would have been satisfied to call what I found a Heidegger "worldview;" that is, avoidance of philosophy as erudition. Yet early on H makes clear it is philosophy he is doing, because philosophy, contrary to worldview, calls itself into question. That thread is built around H's sense of our distress and a need to accept it. Is that an answer as found in metaphysics and worldviews? Only if it is an unsettled settlement, a willingness to stay on a path with no end in view.

Addendum
Herrmann, the editor, tells us that he moved what began as the second of the eight joinings (not chapters) of the text, "Be-ing," to the very end in accord with a note by Heidegger. Overwhelmed by the volume, I have now concentrated study on that final section which H's note characterized as "an attempt to grasp the whole once again." I do find that reading and rereading it does help my understanding; maybe even enough so that one day I can return to the other sections. That is, if I am able to recover my balance from the stunning assertions now coming through.

A Reader's Digest or Cliff Notes version might go something like this: Although the ancient Greeks alerted us long ago to the differentiation between a being or beings and be-ing as such, from Anaximander to Nietzsche (the last great philosopher) be-ing as such has only been understood on the basis of a being or beings. As a consequence, it does not bother us that being as such is treated as most-being or being in general. It ought to bother us a lot, for all the confusion it has caused and for the emptiness it has left us with.

Whenever it was we came to realize that we are mortals and that we can predict our inevitable end-of-life, we also were offered the opportunity to realize ourselves as historical. That is, we come to realize that as there was something here before we got here (rendering us as thrown) there will also be something after we are gone. How does it happen that we so seldom wonder about that amazing state of affairs? Or wonder about it at least as much or more than we wonder about what things, entities, objects, beings are made of? That blind spot is what ought to bother us.

Maybe we still have a chance to recover from our neglect. We have hints of another beginning to philosophy scattered in both the triumphs and the failures of Western thinking. In addition, we have the phenomenon of language, with all its possibilities. If we think of language as a gift to us, maybe even a gift from be-ing as such, we might reassess our place. We then could think of ourselves as granted that gift of language in order to be guardians of be-ing as such. And then we could see ourselves as participants in "the sway of be-ing," which is a kind of destiny, our destiny and our truth. If nothing else, our lives then can be richer in contingencies.

The hardest part is being silent enough to hear what, if anything, be-ing has to say to us. Our history back to most ancient times is seeking for ground when abground is t/here. We account for it by naming it "nothing," but that misses it. (ed. note: Sartre's mistake?) The poets enable us to hear the message of the gods, even while they are few who can bear to listen.

My study of section "VIII. Be-ing," has steadily increased my appreciation for a feature that drew me to Heidegger originally: his insistence and capacity for coherence. His task is both to account for how we have arrived at our ontological predicament and then to offer hints of further possibilities. It is his welcoming of "possibility" that currently most intrigues, as ordinary philosophy gives little weight to the concept.

His innovative vocabulary mimics what must have been his experience studying the Attic Greeks where meaning only emerges in a context of otherwise undefined words. Heidegger's new concepts depend on the whole context of his work. Innovative vocabulary is the task he assigns to poiesis, and its measure is the horizon of our understanding. We can think only as far as our concepts will take us.

It is unbelievable Indiana Press let this translation become a book.

I recommend that first you pour yourself a glass of wine, drink it and relax and dip into...Now what was he saying about Enowing and the Ones to Come and the Last God and all...? That's right, chill out with the Magician from Messkirch. let Der Man speak his words. this is Beitrage Zur Philosophie, baby. The Big Think. Gotta ride this wave. It will take you someplace to think about.

I am not overly familiar with this book. It is the most recent translation of a major work by Heidegger that I have seen this year, and I thought I ought to look into it to see if the thinking around Heidegger is getting any better for me personally. The more I know about philosophy, the less I have to read to start getting an opinion of my own, and a page of this stuff was usually enough to put me in a different frame of mind. Plowing on after I lost my idea of whatever thread I was following had a tendency to be soporific, so I recommend this book to people who have a lot of time to sleep.

There is a little section 72, "Nihilism" on pages 96-8 which makes me think philosophy must mean a lot less now than when Nietzsche inspired Heidegger to write, "Nihilism in Nietzsche's sense means that all goals are gone" (p. 96). For the 20th century to produce a great philosopher like Heidegger and put him in the midst of some of the greatest political foolishness of the 20th century, and have most professional philosophers think that he was showing too much activism when he joined the Nazi party, but was being extremely professional when he managed to maintain his standing in the party while Hitler was in power by not saying anything bad about Hitler, makes me think the comedians of the age might have been in a better position to do some political thinking. In the movie, "The Dance of Genghis Cohn," a little dummy that looks like Hitler was the kind of funny bit which got the comedian beat up by some younger members of the Nazi party right after the show. That kind of German society seems to be what Heidegger has most on his mind in his description of nihilism. "Proof for this is the gigantically organized event for shouting down this anxiety. . . . The most disastrous nihilism consists in passing oneself off as protector of Christianity . . . on the basis of social accomplishments" (p. 97). Younger people than Heidegger have found a lot of individual ways for having goals, and the main reason that they haven't been able to put it together is that a collection like the United Stoners of America is not naturally cohesive. Heidegger was a long way from wanting that to be so out in the open. He must attempt to be so philosophical that his last sentence for the section on nihilism is "Instead this awareness must recognize the abandonment of being as essential sway. (p. 98).