Open Conference Systems, Nordic Geographers Meeting 2011

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Heidegger and the fourfold: human beings as participants in Event of unfolding
Mikko Joronen

Last modified: 2011-02-01

Abstract


For one of the most challenging post-humanist thinkers, Martin Heidegger, the role of agency seems altogether as an opprobrium question. Towards the so-called mid and late phases of his thinking, the subjectivist remnants of the central notion of his earlier thinking, Dasein, were step by step eliminated in order to pinpoint the grounding role of the ‘Event of being’ (Ereignis) and its ‘fourfold’ constitution (between ‘earth’, ‘sky’, ‘mortals’ and ‘gods’). Such notion of Ereignis, which Heidegger later held as being the guiding word of his thinking eversince 1936, emphasizes human beings, not as constructing the reality, but as peculiar beings participating in the happening and opening of the site of unfolding. Accordingly, worldly determinations do not grow from the multiplicity of human constructions and social relations, but from the radical finitude constitutive for the finite happenings of being/unfolding. This presentation shows how Heidegger’s notion of the Event turns the attention from the centre of human beings to the gatherings set around the thing, to the relational sites through which being unfolds places for human action, dwelling and participation. It thus aims to bring forth a domain of unfolding, where human action is neither separated from the material aspect of ‘earth’ or climatic patterns of ‘sky’, nor from the historical paradigms of thought, from the ‘divinities’ or the ‘gods’ of Heidegger, but seen as something already related to them.