I keep coming back to the example / exemplar of houseness and threefold appearing “as” (mansion as houseness incarnate, houseness being merely present in the average house, and deficient in the dilapidated shack).  Moreover, there is the twofold deconstructive reversal where the mansion may appear gawdy to the next person, or the shack quaint/rustic.  But let’s stick with the initial threefold interrelated appearing that gives sense to the notion of houseness.  Analogously, Plato speaks of the relationship of the forms (true being, alethos on), to the particulars (me on, deficient being), and non-being (ouk on; Khora).  You get this through such dialogues as the Sophist, but Plato thinks more complexly here than just a threefold cord.

 Heidegger in his Nietzsche book notes that the form of beauty is silently co-present with the manifesting of being, and so the threefoldeness of houseness appearing actually refers to degree of beauty (e.g., the mansion’s beauty vs the average house’s beauty).  There is here a fourfold cord of interrelations, not a threefold one. 

Heidegger comments

“The beautiful is here not some pleasing or charming thing that is collected. ‘The beautiful of the Earth’ is the Earth in its beauty; it refers to beauty itself. For Hölderlin, during the period when Hyperion is poetized, this is the name for ‘beyng.’ In place of many pieces of evidence, we cite one excerpt from a draft, first discovered in 1920, of a preface to Hyperion (II, 546): “I believe in the end we shall all say: … holy Plato, forgive! one has [originally: “we have”] sinned against you mightily.” (Heidegger, 2018b, 150). 

“What is most longed for in eros, and therefore the  Idea that is brought into fundamental relation, is what at the same time appears and radiates most brilliantly.  The erasmiotaton, which at the same time is ekphanestaton, proves to be the idea tou kalou, the Idea of the beautiful, beauty (Heidegger, 1991, 167).”…  Thus, 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). 

Similarly, if I ask after the law of appearing/prescensing, we see that entities (things that “are” in some way or other – not nothing), we see in order to appear it must show what it is (identity, e.g., appearing as a house in its self-sameness, not as a house at one moment and as a headache at the next moment), not what it isn’t (difference, I encounter the man in his “not-womanness,” and he appears as “not-me,” etc.), and not nothing at all (somethingness, being in opposition to nothingness / khora).  On top of these 3 there is a fourth principle of appearing.  Something can’t both appear and not appear.  Niagara Falls can appear to the local resident as noise pollution, or not, but noise pollution can’t appear / be present and not appear / absent in the same way.  As Kant noted, there is no need to invoke “at the same time” here when formulating this principle of contradiction.  These relations are the senses in which “to be means to have a ground,” the principle of reason.     

Martin Heidegger discusses the “fourfold” (German: das Geviert) extensively in his later philosophy, particularly from the late 1940s onward.  

It is one of the key motifs in his post-Being and Time thought, appearing in lectures and essays such as the 1949 Bremen lectures (“Insight Into That Which Is,” including “The Thing”) and texts like “Building Dwelling Thinking.”

What is the fourfold?  The fourfold names the gathering or unity of four dimensions that constitute a “thing” in its relational essence (rather than as a mere object standing against a subject), like a fourfold cord as opposed to the threefold cord I mentioned previously.  Recall when I previously noted fourfold exemplar products for teaching and assessment at each of the 4 achievement levels: 4, 3, 2, 1 (A, B, C, D). Heidegger’s four relational examples are:

• Earth (Erde): The supporting, nurturing, and concealing ground; the material and fruitful basis.
• Sky (Himmel): The open expanse, weather, light, day/night cycle, and celestial phenomena.
• Mortals (Sterblichen): Human beings understood in their finitude and capacity for death (as opposed to animals that merely perish).
• Divinities (Göttlichen): The god-like or hinting of the divine/gods; not necessarily traditional deities but the dimension of the holy or what calls to us beyond the everyday.

Heidegger describes the thing (e.g., a jug, a bridge, or a simple object) as the site where these four “fold” or come together in a mirroring, interdependent way. The thing “things” by gathering this fourfold into a unified locale or world. This contrasts with modern technology’s tendency to reduce things to resources or “standing-reserve” (Bestand) in the “enframing” (Gestell) of the technological age.

The fourfold emphasizes relationality, dwelling (Wohnen), and poetic revealing over domination or abstraction. It ties into Heidegger’s readings of Hölderlin and his broader concerns with Being (Sein), Ereignis (event/appropriation), and the overcoming of metaphysics.

And so, with our analysis here of Derrida on Rosenzweig and Cohen, we’ve been thinking how Kant is the key figure, but now to mature the argument another Key figure, Fichte is introduced with his discovery of the National Self

Fichte’s great “discovery” is that the Self is social, but also that the social Self is in its origin and essence a national Self. In other words, the “I” in “I think” in the cogito, is not a formal one, as Kant presumably had believed. It appears to itself in its relation to the other, and this socius, far from being abstract, manifests itself to itself originally in its national determination, as belonging to a spirit, a history, a language. I—the Self—sign first in its spiritual language. The nationality of the ego is not a characteristic or an attribute that happens to a subject who was not national-social to begin with. The subject is in its origin and through and through, substantially, subjectally national. The ego cogito discovered by Fichte is a national one. It has a universal form, but this universality does not occur to its truth except as nationality. This “new truth (neue Warheit) completes” in fact (in der Tat) what was latent in the Ich of the Kantian Ich denke, because it is a “new realization (Verwirklichung) of the I.” It goes beyond the ethical abstraction of humanity and provides the “Lebensgrund” of Fichte’s Idealism. These statements pivot around themselves—like a psyche. If the essence of egological effectivity is nationality, if there lies the truth of idealism, namely of philosophy itself of which German idealism is also the realization, then one must say, conversely, that the nation is an ego. It relates to itself in the form of egological subjectivity. The truth of nationality asserts itself as idealism. And since the truth of philosophical idealism, that is, of philosophy in general, is German idealism, the truth of nationality in general is German idealism… This is the exemplary superiority of German idealism as of German nationalism. The German spirit is the spirit of humanity: “The spirit of humanity is the originary spirit of our ethic. In this ethical determinacy, the German spirit is the spirit of the cosmopolitanism and of the humanity (der Geist der Weltburgertums und der Humanität) of our classical period” (§45), that is to say, of the eighteenth century.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 175-6). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

However, Cohen dreaded the narcissism and exaltation in any nationalism, such as Fichte’s, the excitement and enthusiasm involved in nationalism. 

There is always a moment when one must issue a warning, as does Cohen, against a national enthusiasm or excitation (nationale Begeisterung) which shows every appearance of narcissistic infatuation (Eigendunkel) and sentimental complacency for one’s property. Cohen remains Kantian enough to suspect this Begeisterung. He is for balancing enthusiasm by the consciousness of the law, the harshness of obligation, the sense of responsibility. Privilege also assigns a mission, it even consists of this mission. The national Self is, of course, also a “We” and first of all the subject of rights, especially of duties. With no other transition, Cohen moves on to a list of consequences that seem to follow [se déduirei], in a quasi-analytical way, from this German idealism: mandatory military service, the right to vote, compulsory education.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 176). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

So we are seeing how the figure of Fichte (somewhat modified from the original) is going to link with Kant as exemplary.  Heidegger will be brought into this next time