Heidegger, Europe, and the history of "Beyng"

Keane, Niall; Girardi, Lorenzo

Abstract

Much more so than for his reflections on Europe, Martin Heidegger is known for his examination of the question of being (Seinsfrage). As the question that both guided the Western metaphysical tradition and – in Heidegger’s reading of this tradition – was forgotten by it, it always had a historical dimension. In the 1930s, however, it becomes more essentially intertwined with a ‘beyng historical’ (seynsgeschichtliches) account of the West and of Western metaphysics in particular. Heidegger’s ‘history of beyng (Seynsgeschichte) attempts to think the way being has been ‘given’ in different historical epochs and thus determined the way beings were experienced in these epochs. These different experiences of being provide the measure for how the human being relates to them, to him/herself, and to the world in general. In this sense, ‘being’ is not “a mere word,” but “the spiritual fate of the West” (GA40, 40/41)1; and ‘Europe’ is not a geographical, cultural, or political designation, but a ‘beyng historical’ name for the completion of the metaphysical tradition in the utmost forgetting of being in a technological and industrial age.

• Online Publication Date: Mar 30, 2021
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2021
• Deposit Date: Mar 23, 2023
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Pages: 84-96
• Edition: 1st
• Book Title: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Europe
• Chapter Number: 6
• ISBN: 9781138921689; 9780367713775
• Keywords: Heidegger, Beyng
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10502316
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Philosophy-and-Europe/Meacham-Warren/p/book/9780367713775