IN-DER-WELT-SEIN

Clue: phonetic variant of clew (q.v.) “a ball of thread or yarn,” with reference to the one Theseus used as a guide out of the Labyrinth. The purely figurative sense of “that which points the way” is from 1628. Clueless is from 1862.

Sleuth: c.1200, “track or trail of a person,” from O.N. sloð “trail,” of uncertain origin. Meaning “detective” is 1872, shortening of sleuthhound “keen investigator” (1849), a figurative use of a word for a kind of bloodhound that dates back to 1375. The verb (intrans.) meaning “to act as a detective, investigate” is recorded from 1912.

When the early morning light quietly

grows above the mountains . . .

The world’s darkening never reaches

to the light of being.

We are too late for gods and too

early for being. Being’s poem,

just begun, is man.

To head toward a star – this only.

To think is to confine yourself to a

single thought that one day stands

still like a star in the world’s sky.

- Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954) trans. A. Hofstadter.

BY a primal oneness the four- earth and sky, divinities and mortals- belong together in one.

Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant and animal. When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four.

The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year’s seasons and their changed, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether. When we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four.

The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the holy sway of the godhead, the god appears in his presence or withdraws into his concealment. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four.

The mortals are the human beings. They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies, and indeed continually, as long as he remains on earth, under the sky, before the divinities. When we speak of mortals, we are already thinking of the other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four.

This simple oneness of the four we call the fourfold. Mortals are in the fourfould by dwelling. But the basic character of dwelling is safeguarding. Mortals dwell in the way they preserve the fourfold in its essential being….Accordingly, the preserving that dwells is fourfould.

In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in initiating mortals, dwelling occurs as the fourfold preservation of the fourfold. To spare and preserve means: to take under our care, to look after the fourfold in its essence. What we take under our care must be kept safe. But if dwelling preserves the fourfold, where does it keep the fourfold’s essence? How do mortals make their dwelling such a preserving? Mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling were merely a staying on earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather, dwelling itself is always a staying with things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the fourfold in that with which mortals stay: in things.

Staying with things, however, is not merely something attached to this fourfold preserving as a fifth something. On the contrary: staying with things is the only way in which the fourfold stay within the fourfold is accomplished at any time in simple unity. Dwelling preserves the fourfold by bringing the essence of the fourfold into things. But things themselves secure the fourfold only when they themselves as things are let be in their essence. How is this done? In this way, that mortals nurse and nurture the things that grow, and specially construct things that do not grow. Cultivating and construction are building in the narrow sense. Dwelling, insofar as it keeps or secures the fourfold in things, is, as this keeping, a building. – M. Heidegger, “Bauen Wohnen Denken,” Vorträge und Aufsätze.

WHAT is modern technology? It too is a revealing…The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the winds blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it. In contrast, a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit. The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order appears differently than it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and maintain. The world of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In sowing grain it places seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its increase. But meanwhile even the cultivation of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order, which sets upon nature. It sets upon it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be unleashed either for destructive or for peaceful use.

This setting-upon that challenges forth the energies of nature is an expediting, and in two ways. It expedites in that it unlocks and exposes. Yet that expediting is always itself directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e., toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense. The coal that has been hauled out in some mining district has not been supplied in order that it may simply be present somewhere or other. It is stockpiled; that is, it is on call, ready to deliver the sun’s warmth that is stored in it. The suns warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running…

The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth. That challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is in turn distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But, the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured. Regulating and securing even become the chief characteristics of the challenging revealing.

What kind of unconcealed is it, then, that is peculiar to that which results from this setting-upon that challenges? Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way had its own standing. We call it standing-reserve. The word expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere ‘stock’. The world ‘standing-reserve’ assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the challenging revealing. Whatever  stands by in the sense of standing-reserve no longer stands over against us as object. – Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Frage nach der Technik‘,in Gesamtausgabe VII, trans. ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in the Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, pp. 14-17.

NOUS nous avouons coupables: Nous sommes des personnes – - (plusieurs-en-une, mais pas de dialectique ni de trinité, s’il vous plaît: il y en a beaucoup plus que le diptyque suspicieux et la triptyque de la miséricorde!) – - qui reprennent leurs cadeaux et leurs cadenas. Grosso mondo: nous sommes revenu sur la décision que nous avons prise. L’exile dans le monde du réel nous a plu, et là nous sommes de retour – - au moins pour l’instant. Beh, oui: la réapparition dans le matrice sans maitresse ni amant. Et surtout pour des motifs honorables et avouables. Qui n’aime pas discuter avec soi-même?