References
- We place the term “essence” in quotation marks to signal a different meaning than the one traditionally associated with it. For the difficulty that this term poses for translation and the manifold usages and connotations that it carries, see the sections 1 and 3 below. Whenever we intend Heidegger's Wesen we shall place the English term in quotation marks. As to the German term although Heidegger sometimes uses it (especially in the early works) in quotation marks, to avoid overusing quotation marks we shall retain it mostly as it is, i.e. not in quotation marks. His distinctive use will be apparent from the context of our discussion.
- W. Marx “Thought and Issue in Heidegger” in Radical Phenomenology, edited by John Sallis (Humanities Press, 1979) p. 16. See also his major book on Heidegger, Heidegger and the Tradition, tr. Theodore Kisiel and Murray Greene (Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1970) pp. 342 ff.
- To our knowledge no attempt has yet been made to trace the significance of the notion of “essence” in the early works or locate its import with regard to Heidegger's elaboration of the question of Being. For an attempt to undertake such a task see the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation The notion of “essence” in Heidegger's thought: Heidegger's phenomenological explication of the ecstatico-horizonal dimension of intelligibility. (University of Toronto, 1978.)
- By “things” we mean to cover not only concrete entities such as jugs, bridges, trees, paintings, temples, etc. but also any matter of concern, e.g. works of art, poetry, language, metaphysics, etc. This is, of course, a broad use of the word “thing”, a use that Heidegger also makes reference to in his essay “Das Ding” in Martin Heidegger: Vorträge und Aufsätze, (hereafter V.A.) Neske, Pfullingen 1954, p. 173, M. Heidegger Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. A. Hofstadter (N.Y. Harper & Row 1971), p. 174.
- As T. Langan writes with reference to Heidegger's existential phenomenological analysis in Being and Time: “For the Heideggerian phenomenology, the Sinn of a phenomenon is the “Wesen” (essence understood not as ‘essentia’ the form and matter of Aristotelian ontology but as existential structure), grasped in a way that makes possible an existential projection in regard to that phenomenon.” T. Langan, The Meaning of Heidegger, (Colombia University Press. N.Y. 1961), pp. 41–47.
- G. Seidel, Martin Heidegger and the Presocratics, (University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln 1964), note 64, pp. 38–39.
- Z. Adamczewski: “On the way to Being: reflections on a conversation with Martin Heidegger”, in Heidegger and the Path of Thinking, p. 16. Cf. also his earlier article “Martin Heidegger and Man's Way to be”, in Man and World, 3 (1968), pp. 369–79.
- V. Vycinas, Earth and Gods. (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1969), pp. 68, 229–32. This ‘essentiation’ or rather event of essentiation”, as Vycinas explains, in his book on Heidegger's relation to Western thought. Greatness and Philosophy (1966), refers to no structure or content of some entity “which has either real or mental existence”. It predates such a structure for it belongs to the “milieu which grants the meanings and thereby the very being of whatever prevails in this milieu can be considered as having its own structure…. It is like light which illuminates things. Whatever is illumined can have its own structure. Illumination is itself the essentiation of light, it belongs to light”. This illumination, he clarifies, is the “pre-essential and existential light of Being”, from which Vycinas concludes that essentiation is not a metaphysical problem. “Essentiation is thus a transmetaphysical or rather premetaphysical problem”. (Vycinas: Greatness and Philosophy, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, pp. 272–73); W. Marx, Reason and World (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971) p. 88.
- J. Demske, Being, Man and Death (The University Press of Kentucky, 1970), p. 163. Cf. W. Richardson's Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: M. Nijhoff 1963), p. 230.
- See his translation of Heidegger's lecture ‘Die Kehre’ in Research in Phenomenology. Vol. I. 1971,3.
- Martin Heidegger, Introduction à la Métaphysique, tr. by Gilbert Kahn (Gallimard, Paris, 1967). See Kahn's original translation of the verb wesen by ester (hence es west. by elle este), the nominal form das Wesen by estance, and the adverbial Wesende by estant. As he explains the ‘historical’ verbal meaning of Wesen as estance: “Wesen, essence, estance, le sens est surtout verbal et par la exclut toute référence à la quiddité. Wesen ester se réalise historicalment comme essence, sans done que celle-ci soit donnée hors du temps comme modèle pour cette réalisation.” Introduction à la Métaphysique, p. 225. The term ‘déploiement’ (deployment) is a most helpful rendering of Wesen. What is to be thought out in this term, is the ‘futurition’ that is proper to the Being of entities, and which is held off in the Platonic formal substantiation. As Wolfgang Brockmeier clarifies in a footnote to his translation of Holzwege: “Partout et toujours, chez Heidegger, le mot ‘essence doit etre pensé, pour être compris, non comme une ‘essence’ platonicienne, figée, immuable, planant au-dessus des formes' ou represéntant la capsule définitive de I' ‘en-soi’ sartrien. Essence (Wesen) doit être pensée à partir d'être, lequel est, avant tout, verbe. L'essence est ainsi le mode propre de déploiement de l'être d'un étant. Dans essentia, le-sentia est le signe d'une substantification ultérieure qui a figé le mouvement, c'est-à-dire la futurition propre de l'être des étants. Il faudra donc toujours lire, dans cette traduction, l'esse qui recèle toute essence.” Martin Heidegger: Chemins qui ne mènuent nulle part, tr. by W. Brockmeier et F. Fedier. Éditions Gallimard. Paris. 1962. p. 305. Cf. also René Danto's comment on Brockmeier's translation in René Danto: A la recontre de Martin Heidegger, (E. Privat, Paris, 1969). pp. 122–23.
- The importance of fixing the notion of “essence” in terms of Heidegger's problematic of Being (Seinsfrage) as the problematic of the understanding of the horizon or Meaning of Being will be clarified further on. For the term intelligibility see note 31 below. Cf. E. Schoffer Die Sprache Heideggers (Stuttgart: Neske 1962) pp. 94. ff.
- M. Heidegger “On the Essence of Truth” in M. Heidegger. Basic Writings, edit by David Farrell Krell (Harper & Row. 1977). p. 125; for a verbal “essence” see Ibid. p. 140. However, it may be disengaged from the difference between the early transcendental cast of Wesen as inner ground of possibility and his more ecstatic topological formulations of Wesen in the later works. See the author's The Notion of “Essence” in Heidegger's Thought, op. cit.
- An important point of this paper is to show how Heidegger's thinking of Wesen draws its directives from his circumscription of The Clearing of Being. It is the Clearing. rather than Being (as the Being of entities) that forms the heart of Heidegger's thought, see pp. 25–27 below.
- See E. Fink, “Les concepts operatoires de la phenomenologie husserlienne” in Colloque Philosophique de Royaumont (Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris. 1953).
- See Kenneth R. Maly's translation of “The Turning” in Research in Phenomenology. Volume 1, 1971; 3.
- Martin Heidegger: Wegmarken, Vittorio Klostermann. Frankfurt, 1967. p. 96. (Wegmarken hereafter also as Weg) and Unterwegs zur Sprache (Neske, 1971), p. 200.
- The traditional operative meaning of essence coincides with essentia. Hence the first essence asks about the Was-sein of truth or language. Taking this into regard one may wish to distinguish three Heideggerian usages of Wesen:
- 1. the operative traditional metaphysical meaning of Was-sein, quiddity;
- 2. the operative meaning of the term in a specific language;
- 3. a thematic meaning of Wesen that is worked out within his phenomenological problematic.
- For the sense of the first essence as essentia see US p. 201. A clarification of this sense is given by W. Biemel in his essay ‘Poetry and Language in Heidegger’ in On Heidegger and Language, J. Kockelmans, ed. (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1971), p. 88.
- The early Heidegger also uses the traditional Essenz and Substanz synonymously with Wesen. In quotation marks these terms bear the Heideggerian technical meaning of Wesen. The word “Essenz” occurs in Sein und Zeit (hereafter SZ) pp. 117, 233, 318. “Substanz” is mentioned in SZ (212, 314) and also clarified in “The Letter on Humanism” in Weg, p. 161.
- ‘eine Weise des Seins’ SZ. p. 42.
- Kant und das problem der Metaphysik, p. 20. and the definition of “essence” of paragraph 3 of Von Wesen der Wahrheit (Weg, p. 81).
- Weg, p. 891.
- VA, p. 30.
- Ibid., p. 172.
- Was Heisst Denken?, p. 143. Einführung in die Metaphysik, p. 55.
- Der Satz vom Grund, p. 101.
- VA, p. 31.
- Nietzsche I, p. 174.
- For a clarification of Heidegger's thinking of Being as dimensional Seyn in contradiction to the traditional sense of Being as beingness see the excellent article by Thomas J. Sheehan “Getting to the Topic. The new edition of Wegmarken” in Radical Phenomenology edited by John Sallis (Humanities Press, 1976), pp. 299–316; especially pp. 205–206. Alsopp. 11–12 below.
- Many times Heidegger uses essence and Being almost interchangeably. For instance in “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry” he writes: “But because the Being and the essence of things…” (in M. Heidegger: Existence and Being, Gateway, 1949, p. 281). Here essence and Being are not two different things. They are used in a hendiadys manner (saying two things in one). A typical example of a hendiadys relation is the following: God, Lord, and Master. Lord and Master are used in a hendiadys manner. For a telling illustration of this interchangeability of Wesen and Sein itself note the following statement from Nietzsche II: “Das Dasein im Menschen ist das Wesen…” (Nietzsche II, p. 358). Cf. Z. Adamczewski's helpful comments in “Martin Heidegger and Man's Way to Be” in Man and World. 1, (1968), p. 376.
- We use the term intelligibility not in reference to the intellect but as a general term pertaining to the understanding of the Being of entities (Seinverständnis). The term intelligibility can be used, we believe, synonymously with essence provided that what is understood by this term is not a fixed substantiality but any ontological disclosedness. In Heidegger, the primordial ground of intelligibility (ontological disclosedness) is not the intellect but the Clearing in which man's preconceptual understanding moves. The issue regarding a more fundamental intelligibility pertaining to man's ecstatic understanding in the Clearing of Being as opposed to the one posited by reason, is thematized in detail in Heidegger's rethinking of the horizon of intelligibility by reference to Time and World and also in the context of his formulations of “essence” which are no other, as we are here suggesting, than the formulation of the ecstatic dimensionality traits of Being itself, as the a priori event of all ontological comprehension.
- Z. Adamczewski reports this statement in ‘On the Way to Being’, Heidegger and the path of thinking, p. 17. Cf. “On the essence of Truth” p. 139. “… in the concept of essence philosophy thinks Being.”
- Thomas Sheehan: “Getting to the Topic”, op. cit., p. 305.
- On the above threefold distinction a, b, and c and on Heidegger's fundamental phenomenology as topology of Being, see the present author's article “Heidegger's Fundamental Phenomenology” in Man and World Autumn 1981. See also T. Sheehan, “Introduction” in Heidegger, the Man and the Thinker, edit. T. Sheehan (Chicago Precedent, 1981), pp. VII–XX.
- The term dimension (Dimension) seems to capture the dynamics of the World as the realm of play of Time and Space (Zeit-spiel-Raum) i.e. as the domain not only of historical existence (Time), in its threefold ecstatic structure as harbouring the interplay of present, past and future (see par. 60, 1.5 earth, 1.6 elaborated in the essay Time and Being) but also of the “mirroring play” of the fourfold region of earth, sky, mortals, and immortality elaborated in the essay “The Tiling” in Poetry, Language and Thought, pp. 178–182. For Heidegger's explanation of the term dimension see Zur Sache des Denkens (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1969), p. 16.
- By the expression the Clearing of Being (die Lichtung des Seins) Heidegger fixes the World as the spatio-temporal dimension of intelligibility wherein entities come to encounter us as meaningful. (For the Clearing as World see “Letter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, p. 229.) This Clearing is also referred to by Heidegger as the Difference, between Truth, Being itself (and not Being as the Being of entities), Time, World and, last but not least, as Wesen. See “On the Essence of Truth” note 9 in Basic Writings, pp. 140–141.
- Truth as Un-verborgenheit (a-letheia) expresses the unconcealment or openness of the Clearing.
- M. Heidegger, The Question of Being, Bilingual edition tr. W. Kluback and J. T. Wilof (N.Y. Harper & Row, 1958), p. 91.
- For Heidegger's vorwesende Wesen see “On the Essence of Truth”, par. 6.