Re: Augenblick and event

Alessandro - Ali, Maureen

Thanks for these posts and the prompt for further discussion. I'm a bit
behind on things at the moment, and have a few posts i intend to reply to. I
think this arises from my suggesting that Foucault seemed, to me, to have
more affinity with Heidegger's notion of the Augenblick [moment, moment of
vision or glance of the eye] than with that of Ereignis [event,
propriation]. My suggestion was that the two were closely related for
Heidegger, and that der Augenblick might be the place to start to look for
affinities and differences.

The most important text for das Ereignis is indeed the Beitraege, whose
subtitle is Vom Ereignis (Contributions to Philosophy in English
translation); also worth looking at Zur Sache des Denkens (On Time and
Being). On Augenblick, there are some remarks, such as the one Ali
mentioned, in Being and Time, but the key place is the second lecture course
on Nietzsche (vol 1 of the German, vol 2 of the English).

Here's a couple of quotes (GA = Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe Vol):-

The eternity of return, hence the time of return, and thus return itself,
can be grasped solely in terms of the 'moment [Augenblick]'. We define by
this that time [damit jene Zeit] in which future and past affront one
another, in which future and past are decisively accomplished and
consummated by humans themselves, inasmuch as humans occupy the point
[Stelle] of their collision, and are themselves that (Da-_sein_) (GA44, 103;
see the amended version in GA6.1, 318; Nietzsche Vol II, 98).

The highpoint of return is midday, the hour of the shortest shadow. Cf.
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra...

In the word midday the propriation [Ereignis] of the thought of eternal
return within the eternal return of the same is determined in its
temporality - as a point of time, but one no clock can measure, as it is a
point in being as a whole when time itself is as the temporality of the
moment (GA44, 149; Nietzsche vol II, 139-40).

Then compare to a remark from the Beitraege

As joining [Fügung] truth, time-space is originally the site for the moment
of propriation [Augenblicks-Stätte des Ereignisses] (GA65, 30).

Time-space is understood as the moment-site [Augenblicksstätte] (GA65, 235),
and this is the way to understand Da-sein: "the site for the moment of the
grounding of the truth of being [Seyn]" (GA65, 323). To understand
time-space - Zeit-Raum, and not Zeitraum, timespan, i.e. the spacing of
time - we need to think through time and space in a more fundamental sense,
in a way other than the mathematically-calculative understanding holding
sway in the modern age.

I hope to find time to say more soon

Stuart


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