Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

by Martin Heidegger, Richard Rojcewicz (Translator)

Martin Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event. Heidegger opens up the essential dimensions of his thinking on the historicality of being that underlies all of his later writings. Contributions was composed as a series of private ponderings that were not originally intended for publication. They are nonlinear and radically at odds with the traditional understanding of thinking. This translation presents Heidegger in plain and straightforward terms, allowing surer access to this new turn in Heidegger’s conception of being.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, German Literature, 20th Century, Ebooks

453 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second reading of this book – 3-4 years later after the first, I read it over the course of an entire year with a group, and after reading almost all other Heidegger's English translations.

There is no doubt in me that this is the most fundamental text ever written. In the second place and at some distance comes Heidegger's “Being and Time”; and then at even more distance there are authors/texts like Kant's critiques, Nietzsche's rebellion and “horrid wanderings”, the entire German Idealism, Descartes opening of modernity, and the founding of Christianity. The real counterpart for Heidegger is Plato and the initial Greek beginning; as Heidegger's project here is to show how we are totally immersed in Platonism and to prepare a second beginning out of this situation and its unsolvable issues.

In his Ponderings, Heidegger complains that the main problem with the publication of “Being and Time” is the lack of any real adversary. That book was completely misunderstood and as such never really opposed; thus Heidegger decided to oppose it himself and further not to make this second attempt public – hence this book that was published for the first time more than 50 years after it was written. However, the content of this book is the same as in “Being and Time” and the same as in the rest of his courses and writings; that is it is “a way / an attempt to say the truth of Being simply”. In fact the motto of this book is “ways – not works” and the communication style employed here is that of the “solitary ones that only meet in solitude”.

Heidegger looks back at the first Greek beginning and tries to lay out what is needed for a second beginning that will not again lose sight of Being, its truth, its essence, and of the unique and historical happening that he calls Event here. Consequently, he goes over sections/topics like: the resonating of Being, the interplay of the two beginnings, the leap into the second beginning, the truth/grounding of Being, the future ones, the last god, and the ontological difference between Being and beings. Beside Being - Dasein is the main concept here; while metaphysics is the main enemy. Metaphysics is synonym with everything that we stand in since the first beginning/2,500 years ago; and this is due to the fact that in everything we think or do we start from beings and go back into beings (i.e., process or structure called by Heidegger beingness or metaphysics). More fundamentally we lack any language or experience to leap from beings into Being; except for some vague traces of Being, lacks or plights that point to something missing, Dasein (not the same as human being or the like) that cannot be described at all in any metaphysical language, thinking and languages that - as appropriated by Being - seek in its direction, and a few other “proofs” like these. In fact no logic, science, theology, technology, arts, facts, experiences, works, reason, God, or the like have any authority here; as all of them are derivatives of Being and there is no way from beings to Being. All there restated - Being “is not”, but “fundamentally occurs”; as “only beings are”.

Quite interestingly - Heidegger is not claiming here to be the one who will start the second beginning, but only the one who prepares “the way” for the one/ones to come (i.e., “the future ones”); in other words he is only John the Baptist for the incoming Christ; or - in rather pop-culture terms - he is only Morpheus for the incoming Neo. Gods are needed here, but this “last god” - that we first need to prepare an abode for - is “the god wholly other than the past ones and especially other than the Christian one”.


Original January 2021 review:
Probably the most fundamental text that I ever read.
In most of his other books that I am familiar with (except “Being and Time"), Heidegger approached Being indirectly. Here, Heidegger is fixing his gaze on Being/Beyng and tries to say the “simple truth” about it. But how can this be simple - when Being cannot be specified, when the entire philosophical tradition is denounced as metaphysics that completely forgot the question of Being, when Being self-conceals itself, when language is a part of the problem, and so on?
It all started with questions like: “What are beings?”, “What is Being?”, “Why are there beings at all and not rather nothing?” and so on. The early Greeks got a glimpse at Being and were amazed; however, starting with Plato all the essential insights fell into metaphysics. More exactly, in asking what Being “is”, we started to look at beings and asked them questions about their Being. The beings appeared to us more and more as presence and consequently represented as objects. “Logically”, Being was inferred in representation from beings as their beigness and consequently as the most general concept that covers all beings. Thus, Being turned into something so generic and vague that ended up meaning nothing. By losing all its uniqueness, concreteness, and finitude, Being abandoned and left beings as groundless to their complete manipulation - as embodied in our modern practices.
It happened once with the early Greeks and Heidegger believed that it would happen again – hence Being vs. Beyng. We humans need to understand what happened in the past and be ready when it will/may happen again; that is we need to prepare the abode and have it ready when the “last god” will pass by. In the end, “only a god can save us”. In this respect, this is a prophetic book about a “second coming” and the emergence of a new god.
Since the old metaphysical language is inappropriate, Heidegger is trying to describe “The Event” (or the first/other beginning or Being/Beyng) with a completely new language that in some fundamental way cannot be translated into our existing philosophical or common language. Most essentially, nothing can be said “to be” until “Beyng fundamentally occurred”, the “turning” “between” humans, language, earth, world, gods, and so on happened, and consequently Beyng lets beings “be”. Moreover, by letting beings “be”, Beyng conceals itself. The project here is to help the “Dasein” in humans “leap” into “the Event” and for the humans to authentically “appropriate” their “Dasein”. So all this is a discourse about something that cannot be specified, that hides itself, that requires a “leap”, and so on; and given our current metaphysical language this is going to be quite a challenging task for Heidegger - who intended to say the “simple truth” about Being/Beyng in this book.
Beside Plato and Kant, Nietzsche is probably the main philosopher mentioned in this book. Nietzsche tried to overcome the entire metaphysical tradition, but failed. He did so, because he fundamentally stayed within the Platonic tradition, did not comprehend the importance of what the early Greeks accomplished, and did not ask the question of Being (Nietzsche basically dismissed it as “the last smoke of evaporating reality”). Nietzsche pushed metaphysics as the complete manipulability and subjectivity of beings to its extreme consequences and as such everything fell inevitably into total nihilism. For someone who experienced Nietzsche's nihilism, Heidegger - in particular with this book - provides the solution: truth, purpose, destiny, gods, and so on are restored along with the men's dignity. The path and the cost for this is a total dismantlement of metaphysics - metaphysics that include the entire Western philosophy and history, Christianity, science, technology, our identities as subjects, any anthropology, language, worldviews, and so on.
Heidegger continuously goes back to “Being and Time” in order to clarify issues and language used there. His Being's project there was misunderstood as: existentialism, anthropology, metaphysical ontology or epistemology, individualism and authenticity vis-a-vis others, phenomenology, and so on. In this respect, this book is a better take at the same topic and goes beyond what was accomplished in “Being and Time”.
Heidegger wrote this book just for himself and never intended to publish it – at least not during his lifetime and not until most of his other minor and preparatory books were already published.
Someone needs a lot of patience and faith - especially in Heidegger and his project - in order to follow, comprehend, and appreciate this book. There are a lot of passages where it seems that all this is just pure madness; except that a bit later all make sense...

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Heidegger steps around Being and Time [B&T] while never renouncing his previous stances and by realizing that his emphasis from his original formations needed to be reimagined since he wants to implicitly make being as truth while explicitly stating that truth is untruth whereas always focusing on why is there something other than nothing and quoting Holderlin to the effect that all future Gods will be nearer as they get further from us.

Previously, in B&T Heidegger organized his ontology through Man, Being, Truth, and World while making being equal to time and time finite but within this book which is more of a series of thoughts in as much as it does not have an overriding coherence expected from a book since it at times wanders with incomplete thoughts he pivots to Earth, Heaven, Man, and God and gives the priority to being as meaning rather than meaning of being. I can definitely be criticized for this paragraph because I am collapsing a whole lot into one short paragraph. There is a book that I would recommend to anyone before reading Heidegger it is called: The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger by Jarava Lal Mehta, it is probably the best book about Heidegger not written by Heidegger and he explains Heidegger better than Heidegger does.

The Nazi and Fascist part of Heidegger called for a return to the volk and working the land with one’s hands and not creating the Earth as a technological store house of resources as a background for our foreground and using the imaginary special culture, character and community of the volk while tactfully warning against the ‘idiocy’ (his word) of those who think there is such a thing as ‘German science’ or ‘Jewish science’. The whole quote: ‘Sheer idiocy to say that experimental research is Nordic-Germanic and that rational research, on the contrary, is of foreign extraction! We would then have to resolve to number Newton and Leibniz among the “Jews.”’, I get the feeling that for him to call Newton or Leibniz ‘Jews’ would be the greatest of all insults!

Heidegger loved the Nazis for their return to culture, community and character in the manner of Oswald Spengler and elsewhere has said idiotic statements such that the ‘German Language was special and with the exception of Greek is best for discussing philosophy’ (a very nationalistic statement), Heidegger within What About Metaphysics? makes an illusion to the stupidity of those who had corrupted the true Nazi principles that he embraced while commenting on similar racial nonsense.

A real Fascist such as Spengler and Heidegger were would always agree with a statement such that the individual should sublimate themselves to the privileged group, organization, or nation as defined by that self-selected privileged group and needs a leader to channel that proudful superiority that morphs into hate of the other for all who are not part of the self-selected privileged group. Spengler was not a Nazi since he would not take the next step required by making national socialism about race, Heidegger does with his privileging of the privilege class and some of that definitely seeps through within the beginning parts of this book. I harp on this because I see all MAGA hat wearing morons as Fascist and Trump and his ilk are just as dangerous today (5/2021) as the Make Germany Great Again cheerleaders were back then.

In this book Heidegger implicitly argues that there is an appropriation of the clearing that lies in the forest which resides between the subject and the object under consideration and separates Man from God and is the truth that comes from being or as close as we can get since the ontological difference always lurks within us no matter how being contrasts with either becoming, appearance, thought or ought and it takes the event for it to be revealed and presented. Heidegger does have that kind of schematic within B&T but he only has it in passing and it takes understanding where he is coming from a book like this one before a reader of B&T can understand what he is getting at in B&T.

There is no ground for our grounding. There is no right answer except for the answer we believe to be true because that’s what we want, we are the bestower of our own truths. Stephen Pinker ridiculously put Heidegger with the deceivers in the 8th (I think it was 8th) circle of Hell. Read this book and you can realize the absurdity of doing that. Heidegger is just reporting on how the world is, he is not making it so. The only ground we have is the ground we make. In B&T he does give a ground but here he clearly thinks that art or poetry (especially Holderlin and Goethe) are our emotional entry ways into our lived experiences for a grounding but not the grounding. By all means, read Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, he coined the meaning for post-modernism by observing not endorsing. The world just worlds and there is no central overriding authority that speaks definitively on truth. Nietzsche and Heidegger are warning against foolishly outsourcing your ground for truth to authority without substance, at least Heidegger will argue that in this book while he foolishly succumbing to Fascism and even at times Nazism (national socialism).

In this book Heidegger is still under the spell of Nietzsche. Heidegger reformulates his worldview into how Nietzsche saw the world. There are overlaps between him and Nietzsche but Heidegger later in life will regret doing that. Heidegger will say in this book that Dasein is for care and that makes us who we are; he’ll even say in volume 3 of Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Knowledge that Dasein is not just care but ‘will to power’, while he doesn’t quite do that in this book but comes very close to doing it. Remember in B&T Heidegger focuses on the meaning of being, in this book his priority flips and he is getting at being as truth but struggles with the priority of understanding between Dasein and the present-at-hand and the ready-at-hand for being-in-the-world and for beings (essents) while being since as stated by Heidegger in this book ‘truth is untruth’ because Heidegger knows truth means what is true and there is no ground on the Earth except through God, Man and Heaven.

This book covers gobs of different thoughts and I was actually surprised when Heidegger started talking about language and its forms since it sounded very similar to Ernst Cassirer’s book The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, I had thought that Cassirer and Heidegger agreed about nothing.

For those who love B&T, I would say this is a must-read book. Heidegger does invert his formulations that he uses within B&T while never quite disowning them, he is still in his infatuation period of liking Nietzsche, and he lets his own mysticism come through at times in this book, and due to the nature of this book presented as a series of thoughts rather than a concise coherent book with an easy to grasp theme, almost all of the later Heidegger is contained within this book. I think that one should read B&T before trying this book because Heidegger does assume the reader is familiar with it, but realistically it doesn’t matter where one enters their readings with Heidegger since at first, he will always be the most difficult book you ever read while understanding enough that you know you want to know more.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reddit had someone ask what books to read in order for Heidegger

Mister X

1. Buy a hardcover copy of Being and Time
2. Bury it under your local cemetery
3. Come back in 3 millenia
4. Purchase Contributions to Philosophy from any robot butler with poscredz (It is a futurist vision I feel, and accurate)
5. Return it as what you asked for was a book called Enowning
5. You get no refund because it's not the author's or publisher's fault, but Enowning CANNOT be written yet

P.S. (Nonetheless Contributions is "from" Enowning)
Do you see the same paradox I do?

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aion355

I am of the opinion to read his late work first and then read Being and Time, this way you see the hints of what he was trying to get to. If you begin with Being and Time you run the risk of not understanding his later work and getting stuck on his early emphasis on Dasein, as well as his more metaphysical sympathies.

He has a 'turning' in the mid 40s against metaphysics, and towards Being (or sometimes Beyng).

I would say read the sister essays "The Thing" and "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" (I was personally hooked by these two)

Then The Origin of the Work of Art and The Question Concerning Technology, Letter on Humanism, and some of his essays on language and poetry.

That might be a good introduction and then try moving back to What is Metaphysics, and of course, Being and Time, then The Concept of Time (Which was a short work prior to Being and Time).

After you got a general handle on his main works, I would say dive into his many many lectures on various philosophers, poets, etc.

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Pragmatist Rorty claimed that Heidegger's approach to philosophy in the first half of his career has much in common with that of the latter-day Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Nevertheless, Rorty asserted that what Heidegger had constructed in his writings was a myth of being rather than an account of it.

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Highly eccentric in its terminology, his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic.
Bertrand Russell

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In Ayer's view, Heidegger proposed vast, overarching theories regarding existence, which are completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis.

For Ayer, this sort of philosophy was a poisonous strain in modern thought.

He considered Heidegger to be the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed to be entirely useless.

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W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz states in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy that Heidegger's writing is "notoriously difficult", possibly because his thinking was "original" and focused on obscure and innovative topics.

[David Allcott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book in many ways. The depth of phenomenological insight is shocking. What it says is really deep but reachable - and every sentence requires thinking. Whereas, at times, Being and Time, seems ambiguous (he claims purposefully), in Contributions he always bold and clear. Of course one need be meticulous about his use of terms - some of which are only fully disclosed in his earlier and contemporary lecture texts.


It ties together much of his major work in "Being and Time", the 'Kant book', "Introduction to Metaphysics", and "Metaphysical Foundations of Logic". In order to promote correct understanding I recommend reading those first. I started reading Contributions once before without doing the 'ground' work, and found myself just making stuff up. [Warning: Heidegger humor is rare, dry, and droll.]

'Contributions' provides the pivot point to the later Heidegger, which if taken in isolation or out of context seems like mysticism and (pretty bad) poetry. But if you are rigorous in following his thinking the rigor and clarity is there and worth the trouble. Written in 1937, and withheld from publication until 1989, he also hints at some writings to come.

In my hints here of "what the book is about", this review uses fuzzy, non-rigorous terminology in an effort to convey some sense of the matter of the text. Please pardon the effort. "Contributions" is a preparatory exercise in questioning how "being" reveals itself to us. It starts by revealing the hidden foundation in our western tradition of thinking "being" as some kind of thing, or as given by virtue of some super thing. From the "first beginning" of western civilization we and our culture has been dominated by various interpretations of the "kind of thing" that "being" is. (Greek, whooshing into presence; Scholasticism, creation by a supreme being; Cartesian, objects available to our subjective mind,...) This historical "understanding of being" is now bankrupt; we moderns live "in the abandonment of being". And critically mostly we don't even know it, can't see that it has occurred, and this is a problem. We don't even experience the distress of this abandonment of being.

Heidegger reveals a new possibility, or "understanding" of being, a non-metaphysical "understanding of being available" that is available to us.

Contributions is a pathway to this "other beginning", new understanding of being as the "swaying of be-ing", named "enowning". But our history casts a long shadow, and all our thinking, saying, and writing are sourced in the first beginning. How do we enact the crossing, to this new understanding of being, given our current grounding is in the first beginning?

"In the age of infinite needing that originates according to the hidden distress of no-distress-at-all, this question necessarily has to appear as the most useless jabbering - beyond which one has already and duly gone." Section 4.

This passage points to the hearing the Echo of the abandonment of being. Echo is one of the six pathways, to be enacted in the crossing.

This book is written from inside the swaying of being as enowning, and outlines pathways to that new understanding. The symbol be-ing is used to represent the new 'more comprehensive', "non-metaphysical" possibility. Enowning is the name for the swaying of be-ing as we cross to the new beginning for understanding being.

Kudos to translators Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly.

Let me know when you finish

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stormy skies of a mind approaching greatness. Contributions is where Heidegger secures his legacy and initiates the "turning" to Being as event that defines his enigmatic later work. This book contains loosely structured meditations on the history of Being, space and time and the "being-there" that constitutes the foundation of human reality. In other words, the sort of discussions that are guaranteed to clear a room.

This is serious stuff, even for a Heidegger enthusiast. Working through the total collection of meditations took two months of intense daily reading and I still haven't wrapped my head around some of the nuances. But this struggle is largely familiar for the sort of insane individual willing to swim in the weird waters of Heidegger's phenomenology.

Contributions has Big H reaching deep into pre-metaphysical thought to dismantle the Platonic conception of Being as universal beingness. Along the way, he stops to punch holes in the phenomenology of space-time and bemoan the advancing technological age. But the centerpiece of the book, as much as there can be one, is his great offering to philosophy: the vision of Being as the event of appropriation where Dasein grounds a "there" as the open region, or clearing, where self-concealing beings arise.

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE book.

[Emre Sevinç]

One of the best sequels ever. A remarkable, dizzying production that takes no prisoners and dives headlong into the core of the matter, hitting us on the head with 1000 repetitions, just to make sure that we understand the fundamental question is the fundamental question (just in case we forget after the 1000. repetition).

You can almost feel the philosopher's struggle with the language (kudos to the translators! I have no idea how many Aspirins they had to take during the process.). The damn language is not enough as it is, and it is the philosopher's job to accept the challenge. People who looked at the mirror for a prolonged time and felt a weird anxiety (unlike some tangible, valid, justified, easy-to-understand fear) without being able to point at the object of that anxiety, are good candidates for having empathy with the author. People who are not like that are hopeless in that regard.

It is difficult to understand the passion, obsession, and ego that went into the writing of this book. The author is such a nerd, in the most positive sense. So much passion for a single, fundamental question. Declaring "philosophy is useless but sovereign knowledge." Of course, of course. We're stuck with ourselves and being and Beyng and existence.

As he aptly put, he prepared the way, by repeating the question 1000 times. And also ranting about Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche (remarkable, and question-worthy, as usual!)

Maybe someone will ask the question in the future and even start to form a new way of answering it. Who knows...

I can't recommend this book if you're not already familiar with Being and Time, its main themes and some secondary literature explaining those themes. And if you're already familiar with them, you'll be in a better position to decide for yourself. So, what are you waiting for? Aren't you curious enough? (maybe you're not.)

[Tom Romer · Rating 5 out of 5]

PROPRIATION

This new translation chooses the term 'event' to translate the German concept 'Ereignis' over what would have been my preferred choice of 'propriation'.

This disagreement aside, and the strengths or weaknesses of the present translation over the older one notwithstanding, this monograph pinpoints the fact that, like Friedrich Nietzsche, the German professor of philosophy Martin Heidegger is a global thinker whose thought will inspire others to make the leap into thinking and become creators in their own right.

Contributions to Philosophy is not an impossible read, but requires a high degree of thoughtfulness, which one must fight tooth and nail to achieve in our distracted times.

In the shortest possible way, I would say that Contributions is a preparation for a redefinition of man's essence, away from the calculating rational animal to Dasein, the being who grounds the there.

Time and space, for Heidegger, can only be adequately grasped in terms of Dasein and this is because metaphysics, in light of the death of the Christian moral god, is at an end in the sense that it has reached its fulfilment as well as power of illumination.

It is now time for the 'other' thinking whose nature Heidegger will describe in the two sequels to Contributions: Mindfulness and The Event.

What, ultimately, is Heidegger's contribution to Western thought?

I would say that Heidegger's contribution lies in decisively bringing metaphysics as metaphysics to light and to completion, something Nietzsche wanted to happen but was unable to achieve himself (no thinker can leap over his own shadow), and thereby create the spiritual conditions necessary for a few individuals here and there across the globe to assert themselves in their naked creativity, 'beyond good an evil', in the absolving releasement of being let and of letting be otherwise known as freedom.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Heidegger. What to say (What can I say?)?
The leap attempted; the openning of the space beyond and yet anterir to philosophy as we know it, into that which is and is not philosophy.
I need to re-read this. These words will ever remain on my tongue.

[TL · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The issue is no longer to be "about" something, to present something objective, but to be appropriated over to the appropriating event. That is equivalent to an essential transformation of the human being: from "rational animal" to Da-sein...' (5)

'For the rare, who are endowed with the great courage required for solitude, in order to think the nobility of beyng and to speak of the uniqueness... The questioners have broken the habit of curiosity; their seeking loves the abyss, in which they know the oldest ground.' (12-3)

'The one who seeks has already found! And the original seeking is this grasping of what has already been found, namely, the grasping of what is self-concealing as such.

Whereas ordinary seeking... has found when it stops seeking.

Therefore the original finding is sheltered in the original sheltering precisely as seeking qua seeking. To honor what is most question-worthy, to abide in the questioning, steadfastness.' (64)

'The way of this inventive thinking of beyng does not already have a fixed and plotted course on a map of the land. Indeed the land only first comes to be through the way and is unknown and incalculable at every point along the way.

The more genuinely the way of inventive thinking is a way to beyng, the more unconditionally is it determined by beyng itself.

Inventive thinking does not mean thinking up or arbitrarily devising; instead, it refers to that thinking which, in questioning, stands up to beyng and challenges beyng to attune the questioning through and through.' (69)

'This interrogation of beyng carries out the opening of the temporal-spatial playing field of the essential occurrence of beyng: the grounding of Da-sein.' (69)

'It is a tenet of the modern era that we think starting with ourselves and that when we think away from ourselves we always encounter only objects.' (70)

'What is needed now is the great inversion, one beyond all "revaluation of values", an inversion in which beings are not grounded on the human being, but humanness on beyng. That, however, requires a higher power of creating and questioning and at the same time a deeper readiness for suffering and enduring in the entirety of a complete transformation of the relations to beings and to beyng.' (145)

'Da-sein is the enduring of the truth of beyng, and Da-sein "is" this, and only this, as an ex-sisting self which steadfastly withstands exposedness.' (238)

'The history of truth, the history of the shining forth, transforming, and grounding of its essence, contains only rare and widely separated moments.' (270)

[Jack Shipley · Rating 5 out of 5]

“While the destruction of the outgoing world, as self-destruction, screams out its triumphs into the void, the essence of beyng gathers itself into its highest calling: as appropriating eventuation, to assign the ground and the temporal-spatial playing field, i.e., Da-sein in the singularity of its history, to the realm of decision regarding the divinity of the gods…In the grounding domain of the truth of beyng, i.e., in Da-sein, the uniqueness of death corresponds to the unusualness of beyng. The most frightful jubilation must be the dying of a god. Only the human being ‘has’ the distinction of standing in front of death, because the human being is steadfastly in beyng. Death is the highest testimony to beyng (180-181).

Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) may be considered Heidegger's second magnum opus. It was written, in private, during the dark years of 1936 to 1938. Heidegger held back its publication, and it was not released until 1989, during what would have been his 100th birth year. The first English translation was published in 1999, followed by a second in 2012. Many consider the work to be a culmination of and a reflection on the themes he explores in his later work. It is composed of 8 chapters and 281 sections. The individual sections, unlike the ones found in Being and Time, are fragmentary in nature and often read like the unfolding of Heidegger's thinking as it emerges. Some compare this style to Nietzsche’s aphoristic work, but I think it resembles the pre-Socratics more. It is an extraordinary and unique work that does not read like a typical philosophical treatise. Its language is cryptic, obscure, and unusual. However, this strangeness is appropriate to the main issue Heidegger is attempting to work out in the text. The language demands that the reader expose themself to an unusual and extraordinary way of thinking that rejects more familiar ways.

The text is nothing but hermetic. Not only does it engage with constant struggle and strife, but it also produces them for the reader. Its esoteric nature fends off any unwelcome intruders. However, like all esoteric texts, the ones let in will be guarded and watched over so they may preserve what lies within.
Heidegger often uses a term early on and does not elaborate on its explicit meaning until later in the book. It's best to try to accumulate what a term or phrase means by the way in which it is used, allowing it to develop throughout the reading experience. This involves releasing the text and permitting it to speak in its unique way, working alongside it rather than against it. Heidegger is not trying to give his readers a difficult time for its own sake, but instead prepares them for a new way of thinking that overcomes the Western philosophical tradition and confronts the modern technological landscape he found himself in during the 1930s, and even more so, where we find ourselves today.
Heidegger would insist that it is not he or his writing that is esoteric, but rather his topic that shrouds any light. He says, “The transitional thinkers must ultimately know what all insistence upon understandability especially fails to realize, that no thinking of being, no philosophy, could ever be verified by 'facts,' i.e., by beings. To make itself understandable is suicide for philosophy. The idolizers of 'facts' never realize that their idols shine only in a borrowed light.” (344). This echoes a similar sentiment by the philosopher Schelling, who said, “Philosophy is necessarily esoteric, by its very nature. There is no need to try to keep it secret, for, instead, it is essentially mysterious.”

Heidegger's text requires a philosophical orientation that engages with questioning first and foremost rather than the construction of arguments and theories. Heidegger's task is not to bring new representations of beings to cognition, as the history of metaphysics has done, but rather to “ground the being of the human being in the truth of beyng and to prepare this grounding in the inventive thinking of beyng and of Da-sein” (68). Heidegger is paving the way and attempts to attune the reader in such a manner that they turn their attention toward the temporal and disclosive character of beyng. This is taken up by asking the grounding question: how does beyng essentially sway?
Heidegger refers to the composition of Contributions as “the conjuncture,” which is significantly different from a systematic work in the traditional sense. The six joinings—the resonating, the interplay, the leap, the grounding, the future ones, and the last god—are not a systematic progression from one topic to the next. Instead, each joining complements the whole conjuncture of Contributions.

As Heidegger says in the “Letter on Humanism,” homelessness has become the destiny of the world. He thinks “no one should underestimate the importance of standing up to and resisting the unswerving uprooting” (49). Our groundlessness and detachment from our ownmost selves, according to Heidegger, stem from the abandonment of being, which is further strengthened by modern technology. Beyng conceals itself and “abandons” beings by leaving them and hiding behind their emergence. We experience the essential sway of beyng as withdrawing and holding itself back; only in this self-concealment “can beings step forth” (201) and become graspable in their beingness. Heidegger calls this self-concealing part a “refusal,” because beyng refuses to unconceal itself and its essence in the manifestness of beings. The essential occurrence of beyng conceals itself in what it lets appear, namely, beings, as if it were not swaying in the first place.

Heidegger thinks this is when the abandonment of being is strongest—when it is most “decisively hidden” and when beings have become “the most usual and familiar” (87). Beings are the most usual when we are oblivious to the truth of beyng, thus, the abandonment by being is consequently the ground of what he calls “the forgottenness of being.” This way of revealing the world is not aware of itself. It is a way of thinking that is content with the way it understands and experiences beings, thus resisting any room or sense of necessity for questioning and specifically asking the question of beyng, because this question lies outside the realm of representation and calculability of beings. For this understanding, beyng is taken to be the most general and obvious, thus resisting any questioning, inaugurating what Heidegger calls the epoch of “total lack of questioning.” What is greater than this plight is the plight of those who do not recognize the plight.

Heidegger’s project in this book is partially to offer a defence against this plight and offer a leap into a new beginning of history. However, Heidegger clarifies, rather importantly, in my opinion, that this essential defence is “not supposed to ward off the plight so as to get rid of it” (189). The defence, in resisting the plight and refusal, “must instead precisely preserve the plight and extend it into its being carried out in accord with the diffusion of the trembling.” Heidegger believes that technology is the culmination of metaphysics and the supreme danger of modernity. What is established in Plato, especially, what Heidegger calls, “the priority of beingness as interpreted on the basis of techne,” is now, in modernity, so sharply intensified and elevated into exclusivity that “there is created the basic condition for a human era in which technology (the priority of what is machinational, of regulations and procedures over that which is affected by these and taken up into them) necessarily assumes the mastery” (266).

Through technology, what happens is the destruction of “nature,” a “destruction that is ever increasing or, rather, is simply rolling on to its end,” according to Heidegger (218). As it is “brought into service more and more, not only will technology itself develop but its power will also increase beyond measure and beyond check,” and this will happen “if there does not occur a still greater and more essential meditation on the grounding of Da-sein as a necessity which demands stillness and long preparation for the hesitant suddenness of the moments” (309). What Heidegger thinks is needed now is another beginning where “the great inversion,” which is beyond all “revaluation of values,” can be carried out; this inversion is one “in which beings are not grounded on the human being, but humanness on beyng” (145). This, however, “requires a higher power of creating and questioning and at the same time a deeper readiness for suffering and enduring in the entirety of a complete transformation of the relations to beings and to beyng.” The other beginning seeks to and must accomplish “the leap into the truth of beyng in such a way that beyng itself grounds being human” (145).

Through the truth of beyng, the human is “claimed orginarily,” and, through this claim of beyng itself, “the human being is appointed as the steward of the truth of beyng (being human as ‘care,’ grounded in Da-sein)” and we return home, dwelling poetically (189). This stewardship is not carried out merely by “keeping one’s eye on objectively present things.” It is a stewardship that grounds and must “institute and shelter the truth of beyng in ‘beings’ themselves, which thereby once more—by entering into beyng and its strangeness—develop the captivating simplicity of their essence, pass over all machination, and withdraw from lived experience so as to establish another dominance, i.e., domain which the last god has self-appropriated” (190). The last god is not the end; “the last god is the other beginning of the immeasurable possibilities of our history,” and the preparation for the passing by of the last god is “the extreme venture of the truth of beyng (326). The last god is “wholly other than the past ones and especially other than the Christian one (319). Restraint and reticence will be “the most intimate celebration of the last god and will attain for themselves the proper mode of confidence in the simplicity of things and the proper stream of the intimacy of the captivating transport of their works” (317).

This is a brilliant and phenomenal piece of philosophy. I think the Contributions is one of the most fundamental texts in Western thinking. Though often didactic with its monolithic assertions, its phenomenological insight and confrontation with modernity is profound and seriously offers a leap into a new way of thinking that appreciates the mysteries of the world. This is a titanic-sized work and is the ultimate statement of Heidegger's philosophical message.

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah man, just seeing the title of this book stresses me out, years later! I wrote my PhD dissertation on this thing and actually cannot recommend it to anyone. The Beiträge is, essentially, a failed experiment that shows the limitations of Heidegger's project.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heidegger on the cusp of greatness, necessary reading to really get into Mindfulness.

[nonegloga]

L’epoca della completa assenza di domande non tollera nulla che sia degno di domanda e distrugge ogni solitudine. È la ragione per cui appunto in quell’epoca si deve andare dicendo che gli uomini “creativi” sono “solitari”, che, di conseguenza, ciascuno viene messo a conoscenza della solitudine di questi solitari e informato a tempo debito per “immagini” e “voce” sul loro agire. La meditazione sfiora qui il lato inquietante di quest’epoca ed è consapevole di essere ben lontana da ogni sorta di “critica del tempo” o di “psicologia” a buon mercato. Ciò che conta è infatti sapere che qui, in tutta questa desolazione e questo orrore, risuona qualcosa dell’essenza dell’Essere e spunta l’abbandono dell’ente da parte dell’essere (in quanto macchinazione ed esperienza vissuta). Quest’epoca della completa assenza di domande può essere superata solo da un’epoca della semplice solitudine nella quale si prepari la disponibilità alla verità dell’Essere stesso.

[Zurgräß-Batorski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book elucidates the final answer to the Seinsfrage. The question of the meaning of being begins not in Sein und Zeit (1927) but only in this work taken as a dyad with S&Z. This is a book on the internal emergence of necessity of historical being.

[John Roso · Rating 3 out of 5]

AVOID THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY EDITION OF THIS BOOK. Terrible, terrible binding. Not a true hardback and will break on you at first opportunity.

Book itself isn't the best, as Heidegger didn't finish his project and this is not a real replacement for what the rest of being and time should have been.

[Ramon Barbián · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bastante incomprensible, no ayuda que sea un mero borrador de un conjunto de fragmentos.

[Dominique · Rating 1 out of 5]

se si capisse qualcosa scriverei una recensione negativa ma anche questo mi è impossibile

[Jeffrey Rubard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly's translation of Martin Heidegger's Beiträge zur Philosophie, sketches of a planned work from 1936-1938, is an erroneous approach to a fascinating topic. The Beiträge is something like Heidegger's Philosophical Investigations, an exploratory approach to re-opening topics he addressed in Being and Time in a vastly changed framework; published only with Heidegger's cenentary in 1989, it has not yet received the serious attention it merits. Part of the reason is this initial translation, published in 1999; Heidegger's language in the Beiträge is highly challenging but Emad and Maly's addiction to grammar-bending neologisms like "enowning" (Ereignis, literally translated as "happening") renders their text nearly unusable. Translators do have a considerable amount of "poetic license", but an adequate translation must be recognizable as an instance of the "target" language and two decades on this is not. (My remarks are based on a reading of the German text; there is a more recent translation from Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu which aims for more literality, but I have not seen it.)

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)," a seminal work by the renowned German philosopher Martin Heidegger, originally penned between 1936 and 1938 but published posthumously in 1989, marks a pivotal moment in Heidegger's philosophical trajectory. This enigmatic and complex text invites readers into the depths of Heidegger's thought, delving into profound metaphysical inquiries that extend beyond the boundaries of his earlier magnum opus, "Being and Time."

Heidegger's "Contributions to Philosophy" is a dense and challenging work, characterized by its innovative language, neologisms, and a departure from conventional philosophical discourse. It reflects Heidegger's attempt to articulate an ontology that transcends traditional metaphysical categories, urging readers to grapple with the complexities of existence and the nature of being itself. The text is marked by a shift toward a more meditative and poetic expression, departing from the analytical style of his earlier works.

One of the central themes of the book is the exploration of the notion of enowning (Ereignis), a term that encapsulates Heidegger's attempt to disclose the event of being itself. This departure from traditional metaphysical concepts underscores his critique of Western philosophy's tendency to objectify being and emphasizes the need for a more participatory and engaged understanding.

Heidegger's engagement with language as a vehicle for unveiling being is a distinctive feature of "Contributions to Philosophy." The text introduces new terms and phrases, challenging readers to grasp the nuances of his evolving vocabulary. This linguistic innovation is both a testament to Heidegger's commitment to breaking free from philosophical conventions and a potential barrier for those uninitiated in his philosophical lexicon.

Critics may argue that the opacity of Heidegger's language and the intricate nature of his philosophical inquiries make "Contributions to Philosophy" a formidable read, accessible primarily to those already well-versed in his earlier works or phenomenology. Moreover, the posthumous publication raises questions about the author's final intentions and the coherence of the text, leading to debates about the interpretation of specific passages.

“Contributions to Philosophy" stands as a challenging yet pivotal work in Heidegger's oeuvre. Its intricate explorations, linguistic innovations, and departure from conventional metaphysical frameworks make it a crucial text for scholars and enthusiasts of Heideggerian philosophy. However, its complexity demands a level of familiarity with Heidegger's earlier works and a willingness to grapple with the intricacies of his evolving philosophical project.

GPT

[Tijmen Lansdaal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could write a ton of books on this one, but I'm afraid that most of them will be a pain to read: I've kinda lost 'faith' in Heidegger here. Sadly, I'm beginning to see consistencies in his philosophy that are utterly dull and uninteresting to me.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

If anyone knows why a second translation was made a mere 10 years after the first, and that the first wasn't merely revised. . . Anyone?