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       3Event and Phenomenology

      The Concept of Phenomenology

      The dismantling—deconstruction—of the metaphysical conceptual apparatus of causality, subjectivity, and reason, as it structured the traditional reduction and neutralization of the event, opens the way for a phenomenological investigation into the eventfulness of the event. Once the event is no longer referred to the demands of the principle of reason, no longer anchored in a subject-cause, and no longer ordered according to a causal order, it becomes possible to let it give itself to thinking, in its proper eventfulness. “Thinking the event” would here mean no longer subjecting the event to reason, but letting it be (in particular if thinking itself is approached as a kind of letting-be or Gelassenheit¹), and in fact grasping phenomenality itself as event, if it is the case, as Françoise Dastur argues, that “there can be no thinking of the event which is not at the same time a thinking of phenomenality.”² Phenomenality could then be rethought, no longer as objectivity, but as an eventful field. If thinking the event means to give thought to the being of the event, not to what happens, nor to why it happens, but to the fact that it happens, then an encounter with phenomenology becomes unavoidable. Indeed, Heidegger states in Being and Time that phenomena are never simply the given, but instead the event of givenness. This from the outset suggests that phenomenality is to be taken as an eventful phenomenality and phenomenology as a phenomenology of the event.

      Are phenomena events in the proper sense? As just mentioned, a phenomenon, that is, the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned, cannot be reduced to an empirical intuition, an ontical given. In fact, Heidegger rejects explicitly the Kantian notion of an “empirical intuition” to designate the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned.³ The phenomenon cannot be reduced to the category of the given and is instead defined from the outset by Heidegger in paragraph 7 of Being and Time as an event, that is, the event of givenness. The phenomenon must be approached in its verbal sense as that which shows or manifests itself of itself and from itself: “Thus we must keep in mind that the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest” (SZ, 28). The phenomenon is “the-showing-itself-in-itself (das Sich-an-ihm-selbst-zeigen)” (SZ, 31), which indicates that by phenomenon Heidegger means the verbal sense of an appearing, and not simply an appearance. The term phenomenon has its roots in the Greek verb phainestai and means “to appear,” “to show itself.” As a middle-voice construction of phaino, phainestai means to bring to light, to place in brightness, where something can become visible and manifest. Phainomenon, in the plural ta phainomena, derives from the verb phainô, which means to light up, to make visible. The word phaos-phôs, light, has the same root: the adverb phainomenôs means manifestly or visibly. A phenomenon is what appears, what shows itself.⁴ The phenomenon is approached by Heidegger in its verbal sense, that is, as that which shows or manifests itself of itself and from itself, and not simply as the ontical given or as the entity.

      The term phenomenology is formed from two Greek words, phainomenon and logos. Phenomenology is a bringing to light of the phenomena in their original givenness, a legein, a “letting something be seen [sehen lassen]” (SZ, 34). (I note here again how the motif of letting, lassen, is inscribed in phenomenology itself and in fact is inherent in the givenness of the phenomenon proper. It will always be a matter of letting the phenomenon give itself, and not of making it appear or constituting it via the intentional powers of a subjectivity.) Now, if phenomenology is a “letting be seen,” then the phenomenon of phenomenology cannot be that which is simply apparent or manifest; the phenomenon, precisely as that which is to be made phenomenologically visible, must be approached as that which not show itself (while nonetheless belonging to what shows itself, for Heidegger also stresses that “‘behind’ the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else,” SZ, 36): “What is it that must be called a ‘phenomenon’ in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground” (SZ, 35). Heidegger shows that the very concept of phenomenology, insofar as it is defined, as noted prior, as a “letting something be seen,” necessarily implies the withdrawal of the phenomenon. “And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology” (SZ, 36), Heidegger writes provocatively. Phenomenology, in its very essence, is thus a phenomenology of what does not appear, to refer to Heidegger’s characterization of the most authentic sense of phenomenology as a phenomenology of the inapparent (Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren) in the 1973 Zähringen seminar. “We are here in the domain of the inapparent: presencing itself presences. . . . Thus understood, phenomenology is a path that leads away to come before . . . and it lets that before which it is led show itself. This phenomenology is a phenomenology of the inapparent.”⁵ The original phenomenon is what does not appear, not behind what appears (as if it was a noumenal reality), but in what appears. The original phenomenon is the inapparent.⁶

      Now, for Heidegger, what does not appear in what appears is being: “Yet that which remains hidden in an egregious sense, or which relapses and gets covered up again, or which shows itself only ‘in disguise,’ is just not this entity or that, but rather the being of beings” (SZ, 38).⁷ The phenomenon in the authentic sense designates the being of entities, not the entity itself. With that claim, Heidegger severs the connection between the phenomenon and the ontic (although the ontic still retains the movement and eventfulness of being: a being is what it is only by virtue of being; it would not be a being otherwise and could not be present except for the movement of presence that brought it forth and that it manifests). The phenomenon is not simply the given, not the entity, but what does not appear in what appears, and which for that reason calls for and requires a phenomenology, Heidegger speaking in his course on Plato’s Sophist of “a constant struggle against the tendency to cover over residing at the heart of Dasein.”⁸ Since for Heidegger being is never a being or a thing, but the event of the coming into presence of such beings, one can already suspect that a phenomenon in the proper phenomenological sense means “event.”⁹ The task then becomes to understand phenomenology as

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