___

GA 2: Sein und Zeit (1927), ed. Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, 1977.

GA 6.2: Nietzsche II (1939-46), ed. Brigitte Schillbach, 1997.

GA 7: Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936-53), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 2000.

GA 9: Wegmarken, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann, 1976.

GA 14: Zur Sache des Denkens, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 1962.

GA 15: Seminare, ed, Curd Ochwadt, 1981.

GA 16: Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, ed. Hermann Heidegger, 2000.

GA 26: Logik. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, ed. Friedri- ch-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 1990.

GA 29/30: Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, 3rd edn, 2004.

GA 45: Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik," ed. Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, 1984.

GA 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 1989. GA 79: Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, ed. P. Jaeger, 1994.

BFL: Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thin- king, çev. Andrew J. Mitchell (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012).

CP2: Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event, çev. Richard Rojcewicz ve Daniela Vallega- Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012).

BT: Being and Time, çev. Joan Stambaugh. Revised and with a Foreword by Dennis J. Schmi- dt, Albany: SUNY Press, 2010.

PA: Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

BQP: Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected "Problems" of "Logic," çev. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

TB: On Time and Being, New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

MFL: The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, çev. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

NIV: Nietzsche IV: Nihilism, ed. David F. Krell, çev. Frank A. Capuzzi, New York, Harper&Row, 1982.

HS: Heraclitus Seminar, 1966/67, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979.

EGT: Early Greek Thinking, çev. David F. Krell ve Frank A. Capuzzi, New York: Harper&Row, 1975.

THE TURN: ALL THREE OF THEM

Heidegger's main topic was not "being"-- and that for at least two reasons. First of all, when Heidegger uses the phrase "the being of beings" (das Sein des Seienden), he understands the phrase as das Anwesen des Anwesenden, the meaningful presence of things to human concerns. In other words, despite Heidegger's employment of the surpassed ontological lexicon of "being," there is, underlying all of his work, a phenomenological reduction of "being" to "meaning." In his mature work, in fact, Heidegger shied away from the word Sein. "I no longer like to use the word 'being,'" he said.

"Being" remains only the provisional term. Consider that "being" was originally called "presence" [Anwesen] in the sense of a thing's staying-here-before-us in unconcealment [i.e. in meaningfulness].1

The second reason why being is not Heidegger's main topic is the same reason why meaningfulness (Anwesen) was not his final goal but only his initial concern. Heidegger's ultimate purpose was not to analyze the meaningfulness of things but to move beyond such meaningfulness to the "X" that makes it possible. Using the tradition's ontological lexicon, he named this project the quest for the "essence" of being (das Wesen des GA 15, 20.8-9/HS 8.34-5: "Obwohl ich dieses Wort nicht mehr gern gebrauche"; and GA 7, 234.13- 17/EGT, 78.21-4: "... her-vor-währen in die Unverborgenheit."

Seins). This means not the definable "whatness" of being but, rather, what brings being about. To state the matter more properly in phenomenological terms, Heidegger's sights were ultimately set on what allows for or makes possible meaningfulness (das Anwesenlassen), that is, the source and provenance of meaningfulness (die Herkunft des Anwesens).2 He called that enabling source "the clearing" (Lichtung), understood as the primal opening up of intelligibility at all (Verstehbarkeit) that lets us make sense of whatever we encounter.3

These two moments of Heidegger's project--the analysis of the meaningfulness of things and the discovery of the source of that meaningfulness--correspond to what we may distinguish as his "lead-in question" and his "basic question." In turn we might align those two moments with the earlier (1919-29) and the later (1930-76) periods of his philosophy. *

Like many of Heidegger's key terms, "the turn" (die Kehre) is analogical rather than univocal: it refers, by way of an analogy of attribution (???? ??), to at least three distinct but interrelated issues in Heidegger's thought. We may call them (1) reciprocity, (2) reversal, and (3) resoluteness.4

The second and quite distinct issue that also bears the title "the turn" is "the GA 14, 45.29-30/TB, 37.5-6: "Anwesenlassen." GA 6.2, 304.10-11 = NIV, 201.13-15: "Wesen- sherkunft," "Herkunft von Anwesen." See GA 2, 53.34-5: "Das Anwesen aus dieser Herkunft."

GA 16, 424.18-22: "der Bereich der Unverborgenheit oder Lichtung (Verstehbarkeit)." See GA 9, In this paper I put aside the hapaxlogomenon of the "metontological" turn that leads to metontology qua "metaphysical ontics" (GA 26, 201.28-35/MFL, 158.29-35). As far as I can see, Heidegger never again mentions this "turn." I disagree with Theodore Kisiel that the metontological turn is referenced in Heidegger's preparatory notes to GA 29/30: See Bret Davis, (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts (Durham: Acumen, 2009), 28.17.

GA 65, 251.24/CP2, 198.14; see ibid., 261.26/206.3: "gegenschwingende." The new translation of CP (CP2) uses "oscillation" for "Gegenschwung."

GA 65, 407.7-11/CP2, 322.32-4: "der verborgene Grund aller anderen, nachgeordneten ... Kehren."

reversal," the de facto shift in focus that Heidegger carried out in his work from the 1930s onwards, a shift from his lead-in question about meaningfulness to his basic question about the "X" that makes meaningfulness possible. Most Heideggerians wrongly take this second and secondary meaning of the turn as the proper sense of die Kehre. As against that, and in order to emphasize its secondary nature, I will call this reversal Kehre-2.

GA 14, 50.23 and 51.33/TB, 41.24 and 42.30- 1: das Einkehr in das Ereignis.

meaning (to deny this thesis is willy-nilly to make sense of it and thus to confirm it). We do not first exist and only then, as an add-on, make sense of things. Rather, we are pan-hermeneutical: sense-making is our very existence. Even madness is a way of making sense.

later Heidegger's preferred term for the chiasmic reciprocity that is Kehre-1. One's appropriation to holding open the clearing is one's thrown-openness (with emphasis on the thrownness) as the clearing. Ereignis is thus the "thing itself" of Heidegger's philosophy. It is the the opening of the openness that allows for meaningful presence (Anwesenlassen) and thus answers the question of how meaningfulness "is given." Heidegger's key phrase Es gibt Sein ("being is given") now translates as: "Appropriation/ thrown-openness is what makes meaningfulness possible." *

We must insist over and over that what is at stake in the question of the openness [of the meaning-process] as raised here is ... a transformation in human being itself [Kehre-3: resoluteness]... . We are questioning human being in its relation to the meaning-process, or in the perspective of Kehre-2 [i.e. the reversal], the meaning-process and its openness in relation to human being. Determining the essence of openness [Kehre-1] is accompanied by a necessary transformation of human being [Kehre-3]. Both are the same.13

GA 45, 214.18/BQP, 181.7-8, italicized in the original. See the next note.

GA 45, 214.15-26/BQP, 181.5-15. Heidegger's emphasis.

GA 2, 431.13/BT, 226.13-14.

The three analogical levels of the hiddenness of appropriation, and thus of the clearing, are (1) their intrinsic hiddenness, (2) the overlooking of that hiddenness, and (3) the present age's virtual obliteration of both the intrinsic hiddenness and its overlooking. The second level corresponds to the history of metaphysics and the third to the current age of techno-think (Technik).

esse in Aquinas, and so on. In all such historical cases--as well as in individuals today who are unable to see through their fallenness to the thrown-open clearing--the intrinsic hiddenness of Ereignis is doubled: Ereignis, the source of the clearing that allows for all meaningfulness, is not only ineluctably hidden, but that hiddenness is also overlooked and forgotten.

The result is that the ideal of traditional Western humanism is a conversion to a metaphysical understanding of man as the rational animal, capable of comprehending the meaning of things and its ultimate entitative cause, but blocked from an insight into, much less a conversion to, the mortal thrown-openness that is Kehre-1.