Martin Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical “turning.” In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event. Heidegger opens up the essential dimensions of his thinking on the historicality of being that underlies all of his later writings. Contributions was composed as a series of private ponderings that were not originally intended for publication. They are nonlinear and radically at odds with the traditional understanding of thinking.

In the previous posts on Holderlin I talked about the importance of the “between,” how for example in the appearing of a mansion as housness incarnate (Now that’s a house!), Beauty is the medium through which houseness appears / various degrees of Beauty (Mansion vs average house vs dilapidated shack) – the Parousia of houseness in the various kinds of houses.  So, this “between” is important and Heidegger describes it in this way:

The event is the “between” in regard to both the passing by of the god and the history of mankind. Yet it is not an irrelevant connecting field. Instead, the relation to the passing by is the opening—needed by the god—of the fissure (cf. The leap, 157 and 158. The fissure and the “modalities”), and the relation to humans is the appropriation that allows to arise the grounding of Da-sein and thus the necessity of sheltering the truth of beyng in beings as a restoration of beings. The passing by is not history, history is not the event, and the event is not the passing by; yet all three (if we may indeed bring them down to the level of numbers) can be experienced and inventively thought only in their relations, i.e., out of the appropriating event itself.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 23). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.

“between” which in first grounding itself sets the human being and god apart, and toward each other, and appropriates each to the other.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 25). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

There is a wonder or thaumazein for the Greeks at the appearing of beings, and how in our time this Beingness has abandoned beings:

The basic disposition of the first beginning is wonder [Er-staunen]: wonder that beings are and that humans themselves are and are in the midst of that which they are not. The basic disposition of the other beginning is shock [Er-schrecken]. It is both the shock of the abandonment by being (cf. The resonating) and also the restraint that is grounded in such shock insofar as it is a creative shock.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (pp. 37-38). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

What is important to note here is that we are not just a hermetically sealed self locked against the world but fundamentally in it.  So, a schizophrenic may have the world appear conspiracy saturated for him, like beings may appear in an irritating manner for someone who has a stomachache or headache.

This meditation on the self has put all “subjectivism” behind itself, even the one that most dangerously lies concealed in the cult of “personality.” Where this latter is postulated and “genius” is correspondingly postulated in art, everything moves—despite assurances to the contrary—on the path of the modern conception of the “I” and of consciousness. Whether personality is understood as the unity of “spirit-soul-body,” or whether this hodge-podge is reversed and, merely assertorically, the body is placed first, nothing changes with regard to the confused thinking which rules here and which evades every question. The “spirit” is thereby always taken as “reason,” as the faculty that makes possible the saying of “I.” Here even Kant was further advanced than this biological liberalism. Kant saw that the person is more than the “I”; the person is grounded in self-lawgiving. Admittedly, even this remained Platonism. Would one perhaps attempt to provide a biological foundation for the saying of “I”? If not, then the reversal just mentioned is mere trifling, which this way of thinking is, even without the reversal, because the concealed metaphysics of “body” and “sensibility,” “soul” and “spirit,” remains here presupposed and unquestioned. Meditation on the self, as the grounding of selfhood, stands outside the theories just mentioned. Meditation on the self certainly knows that something essential is decided if the question of who we are is asked or if it is not only held off but is altogether denied as a question. Unwillingness to ask this question signifies either a shrinking back from the questionable truth about the human being or a propagating of the conviction that who we are has been decided for all eternity.  If it has been so decided, then all experiences and accomplishments are carried out merely as an expression of a “self-certain life” and are therefore held to be organizable. In principle, there is no experience that could ever set humans beyond themselves into an untrodden domain from which the human being as hitherto understood could become questionable. This (namely, such self-certainty) is the innermost essence of “liberalism,” which precisely for that reason can apparently unfold freely and can prescribe itself for the sake of achieving eternal progress. Accordingly, “worldview,” “personality,” “genius,” and “culture” are endowments and “values” which are to be made actual in this or that way.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (pp. 43-44). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Since Plato and Aristotle, thinking has been addressing things in their generality, e.g., houseness.  This could refer to the look offered, or constancy.  Houseness appears through the individual house in a limited look or aspect of house (ούσία = παρουσία [“presence” 59]), but also is constant, in that houseness never was not nor will be not but simply is.  The idea of houseness is most properly what I have before my mind’s eye that allows me to find my way home every day.

“Thinking,” in the ordinary determination that has been usual for a long time, is the representing of something in its ιdέα [“look”] as the κοινόν [“common”], the representing of something in its generality. On the one hand, this thinking is related to the objectively present, to what has already come to presence (a determinate interpretation of beings). Yet this thinking is therefore always subsequent, in the sense that it merely provides to the things that have already been interpreted their most general features. Such thinking prevails in various ways in science. The expression “generality” is ambiguous, especially since the designation of what is thought as the κοινόν is already not based originally on what is itself seen but on the “many,” on “beings” (as μή oν [“nonbeing”]). The postulation of the many and the basic relation to them are decisive, at first in such a way that even from the standpoint of consciousness the “many” are the “over and against” without properly and previously being determined in their truth and grounded therein. That is precisely supposed to be accomplished by what is “general.” The way this view of thinking is then coupled to the introduction and acquisition of “categories” and the way the “form of thinking” characteristic of the assertion becomes the standard. This thinking was once—in the first beginning, in Plato and Aristotle—still creative. Yet is was precisely this thinking that created the domain in which the representing of beings as such later came to prevail and in which the abandonment by being then unfolded in ever-greater concealment.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 51). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Beings are things that “are” in some way, like a shoe or dream or hallucination.  Nothing too “is” in that we can think and talk about it, though it is not something.

“Beings”—this term names not only the actual (and certainly not if this is taken as the present at hand and the latter merely as the object of knowledge), not only the actual of any sort, but at the same time the possible, the necessary, and the accidental, everything that stands in beyng in any way whatever, even including negativity and nothingness.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 59). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Heidegger wants to look at the question of Beyng, beingness, and beings from the point of view of the questioner.

The guiding question, unfolded in its structure, always allows the recognition of a basic position toward beings as such, i.e., a position of the questioner (human being) on a ground which cannot be fathomed on the basis of the guiding question and cannot be known at all but which is brought into the open through the basic question.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 61). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Therefore the positions of the questioning are constantly different. Every essential questioning must radically change whenever it questions more originally.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 67). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

In the usual way of questioning, Beying is approached as the beingness (houseness) of beings, but in this way Beying is understood as the most empty and general concept that is also the most obvious.

For this prevalent understanding, what is incontestably true about beyng is: its universality (the “most general,” cf. ιdέα—κοινόν—γένη [“genera”]); its obviousness (unproblematic, since the emptiest and containing nothing questionable). Here, however, beyng is never experienced as such but is always grasped only in the horizon of the guiding question, i.e., in the horizon of beings:  and thus in a certain sense rightfully as what is common to all (namely, to beings as “actualities” and as things objectively present).  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 92). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

There is going to be a radical reorganization of beings in the face of Christianity, not the faith, but viewing beings creatively (eg., love of widow, orphan, stranger, and enemy as more important than self).

the great decisions such as Christianity are not set forth radically but are avoided instead… the death of the moral, Christian God; the reinterpretation of this God (cf. Nietzsche’s comments).  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 93-4). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Nietzsche speaks in a letter to Overbeck where at a rainy cottage he was delighted working on his Untimely Meditation while his companions suffered cabin fever.

the genuine unrest of the battle remains concealed, and in its place has stepped the restlessness of constantly more ingenious activity, which is pushed forward by the dread of becoming bored with oneself.  Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 96). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.

The eidos as the anticipatory familiarity with things is why Greek philosophy is interpreted in the light of techne, which is an anticipatory know-how that man has in his procedures against beings, in the sense we say the shoemaker has that kind of know-how before he actually begins his making of shoes for the day.  Grapeness is that which I have before my mind’s eye before I enter the grocery store.

The pejorative connotation should also be avoided, even if machination does promote the distorted essence of being. Yet even this distorted essence itself, since it is essential to the essence, is never to be depreciated. Instead, the name machination [Machenschaft] should immediately refer to making [Machen] (ποίησις poiesis, τέχνη techne), which we assuredly know as a human activity. This latter, however, is itself possible precisely only on the grounds of an interpretation of beings in which their makeability comes to the fore, so much so that constancy and presence become the specific determinations of beingness. The fact that something makes itself by itself and consequently is makeable in a corresponding operation: the making itself by itself is the interpretation of φύσις phusis carried out in terms of τέχνη techne and its outlook on things, in such a way that now already the emphasis falls on the makeable and the self-making (cf. the relation between ίdέα idea and τέχνη techne), which is called, in brief, machination. Since φύσις phusis is starting to lose its power at the time of the first beginning, machination does not yet step into the light of day in its full essence. It remains veiled in the concept of constant presence, which is determined as έντέλέχεια entelecheia[“consummation”] at the apex of primordial Greek thinking.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 99-100). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

“Machination” is the name for a specific truth of beings (of the beingness of beings). We grasp this beingness first and foremost as objectivity (beings as objects of representation), but machination, since it is related to τέχνη techne, grasps this beingness more profoundly, more primordially. Machination includes at the same time the Christian-biblical interpretation of every being as an ens creatum, whether this is now taken in a religious or secular sense. (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 104). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

This techne interpretation of being developed into the mathematizing and measurability of beings as what they most essentially are

According to the tradition (cf. Aristotle on ποσόν poson), the essence of the quantum lies in its divisibility into parts which remain the same as it in kind.  Quantity and quantum (a magnitude—something of such and such a size). Quantity—way of having size, having great or little size.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 109). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Every science, even a “descriptive” one, is explanatory: what is unknown in the region is connected, by being led back in various modes and over various distances, to something known and already understood.  (e.g., the explanation of a painting from a physical-chemical viewpoint, the explanation of the objectivity of the painting from a physiological-psychological viewpoint, the explanation of it as a “work” from a “historiological” or “artistic” viewpoint).  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 114). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

The development of the rigor of a science is carried out in the “method,” i.e., in the way of approach (the adopting of a point of view on the subject area) and the way of proceeding (the execution of both the investigation and the presentation). The way of approach brings the domain of objects in each case into a determinate direction of explainability, one which as a matter of principle already assures the inevitability of a “result.” (There is always some finding.)  The basic procedure in all explanation is the pursuit and anticipatory establishment of individual series and chains of continuous cause-effect relations.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 115). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

But a science must be exact (in order to remain rigorous, i.e., to remain science) if its subject area is determined in advance as a domain (the modern concept of “nature”) accessible solely to quantitative measurement and calculation and only thus guaranteeing results.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 117). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

So, one of the important methodologies for history is historical analogy, the idea if something similar has happened in history it increases the probability of it happening in this case.

yet for historiology differences never become a decisive distinction, i.e., never become the uniqueness of the unrepeatable and the simple, in the face of which historiology (in case it could ever be brought face to face with this) would have to acknowledge itself insufficient. The unrecognized foreboding that its own essence is threatened with negation by history is the innermost reason that historiological comparison grasps differences for the sole purpose of placing them in a broader and more complex domain of comparability. Yet all comparing is essentially an equalizing, i.e, a relating back to something one and the same, and this something does not at all come to be known explicitly. Instead, it constitutes what is obvious, and from it all explaining and relating derive their clarity.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 118). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Historiological work thereby becomes ever easier, since it can be carried out simply by applying a new interpretative viewpoint to already acquired material. Historiology itself, however, never introduces the interpretative viewpoint; instead, historiology always merely reflects the current history in which the historiologists stand but which they themselves precisely cannot know historically and in the end must simply once again explain historiologically. The exchanging of interpretative viewpoints then guarantees for a longer time an abundance of new discoveries, and this in turn confirms historiology itself in the self-certainty of its progress and entrenches it even more in its avoidance of history.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 119). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

The medium for the modern age is the newspaper where everything is constantly updated and written at a 5^th grade reading level

published as quickly as possible and in the form most easily comprehensible to everyone.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 121). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

All of this reflects the massive effort on behalf of man to run from himself.

The hidden goal, to which all this and other things are hastening without surmising—or being able to surmise—the smallest part of it, is the state of complete boredom (cf. lecture course, 1929–309) in the domain of the most proper achievements. These themselves will eventually be unable to conceal the character of boredom any longer, in case there still remains at that time a vestige of cognitive power in order at least to be shocked by this state and to uncover it itself and that which is gaping open there, namely, the abandonment of beings by being.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 123). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Important to the scientificity of the sciences is testing.

approaching as testing, asking one’s own questions, whether when this—then that, if this—then that.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 126). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

The “when this–then that” as ever again something constant (ν). Testing, running a test; Aristotle, Metaphysics Α 1: έμπειρία, ύπόληψις [“deeming”], the “when this–then each time that.”  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 126). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

The approaching and testing, the aiming at a rule, in such a way that altogether what is regular, and only this, determines in advance the objective in its own domain. The domain not graspable otherwise than through the exposition of rules (to test possibilities of regularity, to try out “nature” itself) and specifically such that the rule is one of giving order to the measure and of possible measurability (space, time).  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 126). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Experimentation possible only where an anticipatory grasp of an essential domain of objects which is determined entirely by quantitative rules; and the anticipatory grasp is what determines the experiment in its essence.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 126). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

The scientific revolution came about, not through experimentation, since the ancients experimented too, but because they pre-projected nature as calculable and modified truth as correctness to certainty, free from doubt according to the religious climate at the time because what had to be certain, free from doubt was the salvation of the soul.

opposition, an essential significance and especially if a transformation of the human being: certainty of salvation and self-certainty.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 127). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

Now experimentation a necessary component of exact science, a science which is founded on the quantitative projection of nature.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 127). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

In this regard, beings were reimagined into being particular instances whereby what is true of one thing in a particular circumstance was true of all others in similar circumstances.

transformation of the essence of actuality from essentiality to individuality. Only under this presupposition can an individual result claim the power to establish something and to verify it.  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 128). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

What is history?

A history, i.e., a beginning along with its derivations and its advancements,  (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 138). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).

What made possible modern science was thus the Christianization of truth following Thomas and Luther.

only a strengthening of the importance of the human being as an individual (salvation of the soul). (Heidegger, Martin. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 142). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).