This book traces and engages critically the development of Heidegger’s nonpublic
writings on “the event” between 1936 and 1942. Heidegger held these manuscripts
as well as the notorious Black Notebooks (another series of nonpublic
writings) hidden from the public and directed that they be published as part of
his collected works only after all his lecture courses had been published. The first
of the nonpublic writings of the event is Beiträge zur Philosophy (Vom Ereignis)
(Contributions to Philosophy) and is considered by many to be Heidegger’s second
major work after Being and Time. It appeared in German in 1989 and was first
translated into En glish in 1989 and then again in 2012. The following volumes
Besinnung (Mindfulness), Die Geschichte des Seins (The History of Beyng), Über
den Anfang (On Inception), and Das Ereignis (The Event) were published in German
between 1997 and 2009 and were translated into En glish between 2006 and now.
The last volume of the series (Stege des Anfangs), dating to 1944, has not yet been
published in German. (p. ix)
In chapter 5 (relating to Besinnung and Die Geschichte des Seyns), I engage
the difficult question of Heidegger’s thinking in relation to its historical setting
in Germany during World War II. This includes the questions of his nationalism
and anti- Semitism, which requires a look at the Black Notebooks from the same
time. In chapter 7 (relating to Über den Anfang), I reflect on the major change that
happens with this volume, the shift in attunement in this text, and Heidegger’s
move toward attempting to think the event as inception (Anfang). I inquire into
the way he begins to understand his thinking in a movement of departure into the
most inceptive, abyssal dimension of beyng, indeed even beyond beyng, as he
introduces the difficult notion of the “beingless.” Chapter 9 (relating to The Event)
is dedicated to an inquiry into language and to how, after his descent into the
most abyssal dimension of being, Heidegger will emerge with a new “cosmology”
(the fourfold of gods, humans, earth, and sky) and a rethinking of things as sites of gathering
and disclosure of a world— a world that, for him, is not yet there and has never been there.
(pp. xi-xii)
