Last time I did a standalone post on William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological argument, but now back to Heidegger’s interpretation of Holderlin.

Looking on to section 15, Heidegger draws a distinction between kalon and me kalon, “non beings / non beautiful.  We noted previously how the idea of the beautiful in Plato was the vehicle for the appearing of the being (e.g., houseness appears incarnate in the mansion, merely present in the average house, and efficient in the dilapidated shack). Plato calls the beautiful, kala/ekphanestaton, “that which, as most of all and most purely shining from itself, shows the visible form and thus is unhidden” (Heidegger, 1998c [PA], Vol. 1, p. 78; also at 1979 [Nl], p. 80). Referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, Heidegger says that beauty is “what is most radiant and sparkling in the sensuous realm, in a way that, as such brilliance, it lets Being scintillate at the same time” (Heidegger, 1979 [Nl], p. 197).

“Kalon” in Antigone leans toward moral or beautiful appearing of deeds and ideas.  A person may thereby be kalon incarnate, “what is beautiful are beings, and those beings that are “in truth” are beautiful (Heidegger, HHTI, 88).”  The moral and beautiful qualities of “kalon” (nobility in burial, defiance, divine law) are incarnate in Antigone’s actions and, by extension, her person. She embodies “kalon” not as a label but as a lived reality—her deeds and death make the abstract tangible.

Her actions—defying Creon to bury Polynices—embody nobility: Line 72: “κἀμοὶ τὸ κατθανεῖν καλόν” (implied: “to me, dying nobly is beautiful”). Her deed (burial) and choice (death over dishonor) reflect “kalon,” making her a vessel for it.  Line 443: “εἰ δ’ ἁμαρτάνω, καλῶς ἁμαρτάνω” (paraphrased: “If I err, I err nobly”). Her resolve incarnates the aesthetic of defiance and moral beauty.  Antigone isn’t called “kalē” (beautiful/noble woman), but her character enacts “kalon.” She’s not a passive symbol but an active incarnation—her body and will manifest the noble idea.

The Burial act itself—covering Polynices’ corpse—could be “kalon incarnate” in a physical sense.  Line 26–30: Contrasting Polynices’ exposure with Eteocles’ honored tomb, Antigone’s burial restores “kalon” (nobility) to a tangible object (the body). It’s less personification, more a deed embodying the ideal.

The “unwritten divine laws” (lines 450–460) are “kalon” in their eternal justice. They’re incarnate not in a person but in Antigone’s adherence, bridging abstract morality with human action.

The Greek tragic sense often finds “kalon” in suffering or sacrifice (e.g., Antigone’s death). This isn’t personification in a mythic sense but an incarnation in the drama’s flesh-and-blood stakes.  Post-Sophocles, Plato in Symposium ties “kalon” to beauty and goodness, almost personifying it in the Form of the Beautiful. Sophocles predates this, but Antigone anticipates such ideas—nobility “lives” through Antigone’s choices.

The clash between the mandates of Creon/the polis and Antigone’s familial obligations and obligations to the will of the gods shows a fundamental counterturning in the play exemplifying emerging individualism in ancient Greece confronting a communal outlook.

In the characterization of Greek life, Holderlin says the following:

Radiant the gods’ mild breezes/Gently play on you/As the girl artist’s fingers/On holy strings. – Fateless the Heavenly breathe/Like an unweaned infant asleep;/Chastely preserved/In modest bud/For even their minds/Are in flower/And their blissful eyes/Eternally tranquil gaze/Eternally clear. – But we are fated/to find no foothold, no rest,/ And suffering mortals/ Dwindle and fall/ Headlong from one/ Hour to the next/Hurled like water/From ledge to ledge/Downward for years to the vague abyss. (HS, 101)

Heidegger/Fink, commenting on the meaning of the passage, says the following, “the gods wander without destiny, their spirit eternally in bloom, while humans lead a restless life and fall into the cataract of time and disappear.” (HS, 101)

Heidegger comments “Constantly on a path toward the homely site, and at the same time placed at stake in the play that repudiates the homely, human beings in their innermost essence are those that are unhomely (Heidegger, HHTI, 90).”

Holderlin says that Full of merit, yet poetically/Humans dwell upon the earth.  Heidegger, in his commentary on this, brings out what he sees as technology in relation to the uncanniness of existence that we have been speaking of, as the essence of techne, ‘Full of merit …’ humans indeed dwell. In what they effect and in their works they are capable of a fullness. It is almost impossible to survey what humans achieve, the way in which they establish themselves upon this earth in using and exploiting and working it, in protecting it and securing it and furthering their ‘art,’ that is, in Greek, techne. ‘Yet’ – none of this reaches into the essential ground of their dwelling upon this earth. All this working and achieving, this building and cultivating, is merely cultura, culture. Culture is always already only the consequence of a ‘dwelling,’ of a being ‘at home’ of spirit. Such dwelling, however, being properly homely, is the becoming homely of a being unhomely (HHTI, 137)

Heidegger says that as long as man is wholly absorbed in nothing but purposeful self-assertion, not only is he himself unshielded, but so are things, because they have become objects. In this, to be sure, there also lies a transmutation of things into what is inward and visible. But this transmutation replaces the frailties of things by the thought-contrived fabrications of calculated objects. These objects are produced to be used up. The more quickly they are used up, the greater becomes the necessity to replace them even more quickly and more readily (PLT, WPF, 129-30).”

The essence of technology consists in this, the “restless (PLT, T, 166),” unending drive to increase our mastery over beings, to reduce the distance between us and them, which none the less does not bring a nearness, to be at peace and at home in things in a way that would quench the ever increasing restless attempt to master beings.  It is, as the characteristic of man’s restlessness, a lack of dwelling, a not being at home. We are figuratively addicted to the luster of beings, always needing to up the dose.

Counterposed to the unhomely, to restlessness, dwelling is to be at peace, “in what does the nature of dwelling consist? … The Old Saxon wuon, the Gothic wunian, like the old word bauen, mean to remain, to stay in place. But the Gothic wunian says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced. Wunian means: to be at peace, to be brought to peace, to remain in peace (PLT, BDT, 148-9).” Said otherwise, the unhomeliness of man consists precisely in his lack of ability to remain at home, “The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell (PLT, BDT, 161).”

The key is to distinguish 2 different kinds of love: desire as lack like the eros honor seeking Achilles, and desire as surplus transfiguring widow, orphan stranger and enemy to be more important than self with agape.  Heidegger comments:

“The Roman word res designates that which concerns somebody, … that which is pertinent, which has a bearing … In English ‘thing’ has still preserved the full semantic power of the Roman word: ‘He knows his things,’ he understands the matters that have a bearing on him … The Roman word res denotes what pertains to man, concerns him and his interests in any way or manner. That which concerns man is what is real in res … Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an expression of Dionysius the Areopagite: love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves (PLT, T, 175-6).”

Heidegger says: … To be absorbed by something … [means] ‘to be totally preoccupied by something , as for instance, when one says: He is entirely engrossed in his subject matter. Then he exists authentically as who he is, that is, in his task … Da-sein means being absorbed in that toward which I comport myself… To be absorbed in beholding the palm tree in front of our window is letting the palm tree come to presence, its swaying in the wind, is absorption of my being-in-the world and of my comportment in the palm tree. (Z, 160-161)