Heidegger’s World: Re-Enchanting through Thingness

Abstract

This study investigates how Martin Heidegger’s notion of “the thing” (Das Ding) can help rescue modern disenchantment with regard to its root in the World, a concept developed from “being-in-the-world” presented in Being and Time, and later taken as a participant in the bilateral polemos illustrated in die Gestalt (signifying Being’s strife to disclose itself against the Earth: self-concealing concealment). In Section 1, I analyze the occurrence of disenchantment by critically reviewing several thinkers’ discussions of it, pointing out that “faciality”—which has structured the modern Western understanding of reality—is the cornerstone of ontotheology, as well as the collapse of it: disenchantment. In Section 2, to demonstrate how Heidegger’s rediscovery of usefulness in a de-subjectified discourse of signification has challenged the positivistic view attached to “faciality”, I examine Heidegger’s idea of “readiness-to-hand,” revealing the basic temporal–spatial units composing the “handiness” of categorical beings and its relation to Dasein, progressing thereon to the analysis of a thing-centered worldview of Heidegger’s phenomenology. In Section 3, I demonstrate how this thing-centered worldview has the potential to form a preparative stage for re-enchantment of the World by uncovering the concealed existentiality within things, aligning with Heidegger’s polemos in his philosophy of art.

1. Disenchantment and Historical Change in the Conception of Reality

The concept of the modern world becoming “disenchanted”, although increasingly controversial in recent years, has long been a view in the study of modernity dating back to the early 20th century. It was first introduced by Max Weber in his 1919 lecture “Science as a Vocation”, where he discussed the issue of “intellectualization” and argued that the mission of modern scholarship—remaining impartial and detached from meaning judgments, using calculative methods, and producing calculable results—is the inevitable outcome of disenchantment. According to Weber, the fundamental unknowability of the mystical aspect of the universe, combined with the perceived effectiveness of rational analytical tools, has led to an era in which people no longer seek help from the sacred to improve their lives. In comparison to their ancestors, they tend to be less receptive to mysterious powers and spirits, which is due to the intellectualized recognition that, as an alternative to “technical means and calculation”, magical thinking is not promising. In this way, disenchantment is not only occurring within the scientific realm, but it is also changing the way of thinking for all people in this age.

Principally, there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculation perform the service. This, above all, is what intellectualization means.

(Weber 1946, p. 139)

However, Max Weber, in his analysis of disenchantment, did not delve into the origins of this phenomenon. He merely acknowledged its occurrence without attempting to understand how it arises ontologically. It is not clear if Weber was interested in exploring alternative possibilities to disenchantment or if he believed it to be an inescapable, irreversible reality. Instead, he focused on finding ways to cope with disenchantment as a fait accompli. Moreover, his explanation of the causal relationship between the loss of gods and the rise of science and technology entails a pragmatic perspective, as shown in the phrases “no longer have recourse”, “master or implore”, and “perform the service” quoted above. This suggests that he thought “technical means and calculation” replaced the “spirits” just because they effectively fulfilled the latter’s role of being employed to achieve practical purposes. In addition, Weber questioned the very foundation of “fundamental value” in both science and religion, arguing that even if practical purposes can be realized via science, the meaningfulness of science can by no means be confirmed since the judgment of meaningfulness belongs to the epistemologically inaccessible sphere.1 Following this logic, the holy is described as something epistemologically inaccessible as well, and thus, is considered unlawful to guarantee the validity of itself as well as because “certain subjective states and acts possess the quality of holiness” (Weber 1946, p. 154). This is why, as concluded by Weber, a scholar can only surrender to positivism; otherwise there would be “intellectual sacrifice” (Ibid.).

Weber’s declaration of the “disenchantment of the world”, his observation of the meaning crisis in both religion and science, and his acute discovery of the retreat of the mystical from the public sphere are monumental. These ideas are exemplified by his poignant reflection towards the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05): “According to Baxter, the concern for material goods should lie upon the shoulders of his saints like ‘a lightweight coat that could be thrown off at any time”. Yet fate allowed a steel-hard casing […] to be forged from this coat” (Weber 2005, p. 103). He thus initiated a discourse on secularity that has since been taken up by scholars such as Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, and Martin Hägglund, influencing the ongoing dialogue about faith in an increasingly materialistic era to this day. However, as we focus on the issue of disenchantment, which is more than ever evident as a disease of capitalism and its attendant valuation mechanisms, we should also recognize, retrospectively, that there is a problem with Weber’s original articulation of it: is it justifiable to take for granted a pragmatic and positivistic stance—that is, to attribute a thing’s decline simply to the fact that it is no longer effective in being employed, and to refuse to discuss a thing’s “value” merely because the source of such “value” is scientifically unverifiable—in the analysis of a historical phenomenon, given that pragmatism and positivism are historical phenomena?

Heidegger is more insightful than Weber in questioning the basis of taking such a stance. For Heidegger, as for Weber, modernity involves a “loss of the gods”—“degodization”—an unrestricted trust in the effectiveness of scientific and technological tools, along with a positivist mindset that doubts all unverifiable beings. However, Heidegger saw the root of this disenchantment in the pre-modern establishment of ontotheology (beginning with post-Socratic idealism and culminating in Christianity) instead of its modern collapse, as Charles Taylor, for example, has suggested. In Heidegger’s view, it is the construction of a discourse of ontotheology that attributes the originality of the world to an “infinite, unconditional, absolute” cause, rather than the supposed inaccessibility of such a cause, that has led to the flight of God and the gods. The disenchantment thus defined has occurred in a double sense: first, it represents the creating agency (if there is one) as a pure idea objectively grasped; second, the “worldview” made possible by the entire system of representation has reduced our primordial sense of the mystical to a mere empirical scope. He wrote in 1938:

The loss of the gods is a twofold process. On the one hand, the world picture is Christianized in as much as the cause of the world is posited as infinite, unconditional, absolute. On the other hand, Christendom transforms Christian doctrine into a worldview (the Christian worldview) and in that way makes itself modern and up to date. The loss of the gods is the situation of indecision regarding God and the gods. Christendom has the greatest share in bringing it about. But the loss of the gods is so far from excluding religiosity that rather only through that loss is the relation to the gods changed into mere “religious experience”. When this occurs, then the gods have fled.

(Heidegger 1977, p. 116)

As far as Heidegger is concerned, the fundamental problem with disenchantment is the lack of reflection on the evolution of the pre-disenchanted conception of the mystical. He asserts that the prevailing nihilism in modernity, which casts doubt on discussions of “value” as described by Weber, stems from the Cartesian perspective of the world as a static image. Within this framework, beings are perceived and assessed solely on the basis of their function as vessels representing the goodness bestowed by a superior entity, namely God. Consequently, worth is equated with value, and God Himself, the authority of value, is reduced to a representation. Heidegger thought that this marked a sharp departure from the situation in pre-Socratic Greece, where people just “lived with” the gods and fostered a more direct relationship with the sacred dimension of the cosmos—he clarified this connection by emphasizing his interpretation of the Greek word for “they”: “The αυτά refers to everything present, everything that presences by lingering awhile: gods and men, temples and cities, sea and land, eagle and snake, tree and shrub, wind and light, stope and sand, day and night” (Heidegger 1984, p. 40), which clearly shows intimate interconnectedness between humans and the holy. That is why, in his 1942 comments on Nietzsche’s declaration “God is dead”, Heidegger argued that it is misleading to see nihilism as a purely modern phenomenon only arising with the abandonment of God and the values associated with Him. According to Heidegger, nihilism emerged in “the interpretation of the God as the highest value” by believers themselves and denotes a degradation of “the first of beings” (Heidegger 1977, p. 105).

Hence, Weber’s positivist perspective on disenchantment is challenged by Heidegger’s critique of value representation. For Heidegger, it is illicit to declare the unlawfulness of questioning the worthiness of a thing based on it being epistemologically inaccessible, which relies on the assumption that something must be epistemologically accessible to be considered worthwhile: a premise held by rational supremacists who link the judgment of worth with the value of reason. Without the reduction of worth to values, Weber’s explanation of science and technology’s replacement of magic due to the latter’s ineffectiveness—its lack of practical value—is also unconvincing. As mentioned before, Heidegger believed that replacement is caused by a “worldview” that favors representationally assessable things. Further, he contended that the deeper root of the establishment of the “worldview” is that human beings are “needed” by “a destining of revealing” (Heidegger 1977, p. 30) to engage in the historical coming-into-presence of “Enframing” (Gestell)—“the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve” (Heidegger 1977, p. 20).

The interpretation of this quote, particularly the concept of “challenging”, presents certain complexities. Basically, it denotes an artificial disruption of the natural rhythm of beings. Heidegger asserts that “the work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field”, whereas agriculture, specifically “the mechanized food industry” does (Ibid.). The essential distinction between these two forms of labor lies in the fact that agriculture, as a branch of modern technology, has established its own scheme grounded in scientific measurement, objectifying the world to fit into a subjective configuration. It is important to note, however, that “Enframing” should not be reduced solely to the Cartesian subject–object dichotomy. Instead, it is a part of the compelling revelation of Being and beings demanded by the essence of Dasein, which exists as a region of unconcealedness, disclosing what is, and can be traced back to the purpose of “clearing” (Lichtung) inherent in the initial transition from magical thinking to rationalization in ancient Greece:

For the Greek, what is their own is “the fire from the heavens”, that is, the light and the glow of that which determines the arrival and proximity of the gods. Yet in order to appropriate this as their own, the Greeks had to pass through something foreign, namely through the “clarity of presentation”. They had to be alienated and taken hold by the latter so as with aid first to bring the fire into the still radiance of pure lucidity.

(Heidegger 1996, p. 136)

In this way, Heideggerian disenchantment is portrayed as a deeply ingrained, long-evolved, and inevitable condition inherent to the autonomous unfolding of Being. This condition compels itself to seek transparency and articulation. As a result, human Dasein assumes the role of “challenging”, extracting and consolidating the pre-thematic reality that initially arose as primal poesy from the idea/material indistinguishable ambiguity, thereby subjecting existence to scientific scrutiny. While this process aims to reveal and has indeed succeeded in granting clarity to what has been transformed into a “worldview”, it has also led to the oblivion of the multidimensional enchanted world that once existed in a hazy, dynamic, discrete manner. This phenomenon is observed across all sciences, including theology, which Heidegger also regards as a “positive science”.

In his lecture “Phenomenology and Theology” delivered in Spring 1927, supplemented by later notes, Heidegger elaborates on how theology, as a theoretical and objectifying inquiry “enjoined on faith, out of faith, and for faith” (Heidegger 1998, p. 45) has ontically overcome one’s pre-Christian existence by imbuing finite being-toward-death with the notion of “rebirth”. However, it remains ontologically determined by the existential framework it seeks to comprehend. At its core, he believes, is the preservation of existential concepts within theological ones. For example, he explains:

Sin is manifest only in faith, and only the believer can factically exist as a sinner. But if sin, which is the counterphenomenon to faith as rebirth and hence a phenomenon of existence, is to be interpreted in theological concepts, then the content of the concept itself, and not just any philosophical preference of the theologian, calls for a return to the concept of guilt. But guilt is an original ontological determination of the existence of Dasein.

(Heidegger 1998, p. 51)2

This perspective shifts the focus towards the unfathomable mysteries that govern the evolution of Being beyond human beings’ self-conscious understanding. Weber shared a similar notion when he stated, “[f]ate, and certainly not ‘science,’ holds sway over these gods and their struggles” (Weber 1946, p. 148). As Heidegger argues, this fate can only be comprehended through philosophy, concerned with the existential. By contrast, theology, being existentiell, is merely the ontic rationalization of a phenomenon, itself a product of disenchantment.

Consequently, to shed light on the cause of the disappearance of the gods, one must temporarily step outside the realm of theology. While ongoing debates persist regarding the possibility of a Heideggerian “theology”, it is beyond the scope of the investigation previously defined as a historical problem within the internal transfiguration of “Enframing”. Instead, it is crucial to examine the issue on its existential grounds, and this requires a look at Heidegger’s ontological concept of Being. According to his interpretation of its pre-Socratic context, Being as truth as aletheia manifests itself through the world’s struggle to open the earth, constituting the template of die Gestalt (Heidegger 1971, pp. 38–55). With reference to Section 7 of Parmenides (1942), this strife, serving as a primary movement generating the causality of presence, can be understood in principle as a polemos against lethe—the counter-essence of aletheia—by way of Dasein’s intuitive knowing of lethe (Heidegger 1992, pp. 118–20).

In Heidegger’s philosophy, lethe is not just the ontological oblivion of Being, but also synonymous with the abyss (Ab-grund), developed from its literary prototype found in the Greek Underworld, a realm of emptiness where a river of “unmindfulness” erases the memories of departed souls before they embark on their next mortal journey. Heidegger considers this abyss to be an originary onefold “time-space” where “god, man, world, earth recoils in swaying” and the decision regarding Being and non-Being takes place (Heidegger 2012, pp. 21, 264–66, 341). Thus, for Heidegger, modern disenchantment is essentially the consequence of a historical amnesia that could be phrased as follows: Ironically, the effort against oblivion, which aimed to grasp the intelligible thematically, has inadvertently relinquished the entire pre-scientific landscape to its adversary, until the withdrawing effects of lethe have submerged the world so grandly that the very existence of lethe becomes unintelligible, and the self-evident nature of aletheia—that which comes to be by standing in contrast to lethe—has also been forgotten. Heidegger’s consistent criticism of Cartesianism indicates that he thought in the change of truth’s definition from the unconcealment of being to the correctness of representations3, the old way of experiencing reality as the lethe–aletheia interplay has become inaccessible to humans—who have converted the manifold World into a simple system of values.

Concerning a pre-disenchanted conception of reality, Weber’s analysis of charismatic authority serves as a good example to support Heidegger’s opinion of how truth used to be received by humans. According to Weber, the credibility of charisma is guaranteed by “a ‘sign’ or proof, originally always a miracle”, (Weber 1968, p. 49), which is self-evident, self-sufficient, and free from “intellectually analyzable rules” (Weber 1968, p. 52). In this regard, “recognition is a duty” (Weber 1968, p. 51). Whenever people need to rationally justify charismatic authority and ask for its legitimacy, the secularization of charisma occurs. Moreover, the meaningfulness presupposed in religion lies “beyond the limits of science”, not representing “knowledge” but rather existing as a “possession” (Weber 1946, p. 154). On this issue, he shared very similar viewpoints with Heidegger, who maintained that prior to the establishment of a Cartesian picture—for instance, in the Middle Ages, although faith was already theorized within Christianity, the pursuit of truth was not directed toward the development of science, namely, “the theory of the real”, (Heidegger 1977, p. 157), but truth was purely thought of as a kind of divine revelation, transcending human epistemological agency (Heidegger 1977, p. 130). Since reality has been objectified into quantifiable representations and subjected to overwhelming machination in an age when positive science is regarded as the sole agency granting credibility, the meaning of truth has also undergone a fundamental change, losing its connection to any untestable agency of divinity.

The problem of the opposition between value representation and spiritualism, especially the former’s swallowing of the latter through the formation of a “worldview”, has been examined by other modern thinkers such as William James, who in 1899 asserted that there is a “certain blindness” emerging from the pragmatic trend that has caused the decline of spirituality. Like Heidegger, James also called for returning to thingness from a de-subjectified perspective. In his comments on an autobiographical passage by Richard Jefferies narrating “a worthless hour of life” spent on appreciating the Sun and Earth, James said that we as “practical beings”—who are occupied with “limited functions and duties to perform” (James 2010, p. 146)—would first have to become “worthless” in order to “attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal world of worths as such” (James 2010, p. 155). Nevertheless, he still affirmed that the “mystic sense of hidden meaning starts upon us often from non-human natural things” (James 2010, p. 152), citing a paragraph from “Obermann” that cherishes “a jonquil in blossom” and Wordsworth’s phrasing—“Authentic tidings of invisible things!” (James 2010, p. 153)—to illustrate his point. However, James did not attempt to abolish the subject/object dualism in his criticism of subject-centered pragmatism. He only pointed out the incompatibility of spiritual worth and practical value, respectively connecting them with objecthood and subjecthood while urging for a change of perspective to engage in the common spirituality enlightened by “a large objective scale” (James 2010, p. 155).

In this respect, the views of Deleuze and Guattari, the deconstructive critics of liberal capitalism, go even further. In A Thousand Plateaus they question the structural basis of subject-centered pragmatism. They use the metaphor of a “face” to characterize Western civilization: according to them, the combination of signification and subjectification—as a natural consequence of the mixture of semiotics that induced the establishment of a white wall/black hole mechanism—composes the “faciality” of the West:

Earlier, we encountered two axes, signifiance and subjectification. We saw that they were two very different semiotic systems, or even two strata. Signifiance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies. Since all semiotics are mixed and strata come at least in twos, it should come as no surprise that a very special mechanism is situated at their intersection. Oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system.

(Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p. 167)

Perhaps because Deleuze and Guattari’s theory was not proposed until 1980—much later than the views of Nietzsche, James, Weber, and also later than that of Heidegger—it may have led to a more radical undermining of the traditional Western concept of reality. Hence, pure subjectification is not sufficient to remold reality into the subject-value-representation-object chain that is illustrated above; rather, it must be assisted by the system of signification to achieve this.

This point is quite inspiring in studies of Heidegger, for as clearly articulated in his hermeneutic phenomenology, Heidegger essentially saw the world, or Dasein’s being-in-the-world, as the totality of significances. In Section 17 of Being and Time (1927), Heidegger elucidates how the formation of the “thing”, which constitutes “worldliness”, relies on “reference and signs” (Heidegger 1962, pp. 107–14). In his commentary on “The Ister” (1942), he specifically explores why the poet, as a “sign” or a “symbol”, is needed by Being to clarify the essence of showing in terms of the indispensable role of language in defining human Dasein. He even asserts: “The belonging together of the gods is therefore conditioned by this sign, through the fact that the sign is” (Heidegger 1996, p. 136). This raises concerns about whether Heidegger’s conception of reality remains confined within the “white wall”: Was it limited by traditional discourse and thus inadequate? Moreover, the more fundamental question underlying this issue is, if Deleuze and Guattari were correct in pointing out the two spheres’ collaborative effects in the construction of “facility”, is it necessary to destroy both signification and subjectification in order to overcome their hybrid product, which actually serves as the soul behind the “face”: res cogitans? If so, is Heidegger’s project of recovering the full meaning of Being, so far shielded by Western ontotheology, merely a failed “revolution” insofar as it still operates on the system of signification?

I propose that the answer to all these questions is “no”, especially the second one. Essentially, Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology entails exploring the potentiality of a de-subjectified system of signification in redefining the traditional metaphysical idea of reality, which would further lead to the possibility of re-enchantment without erasing existing discourse, but which would definitely be capable of overcoming res cogitans by containing it. His project includes two parts:

(1)

At the deconstructive level, he investigated the game that a subject is playing; that is, rationalizing within signification, which is present in his numerous criticisms of Descartes, ontotheology, machination, and value representation. Heidegger claimed that “Nietzsche’s thinking remains imprisoned in value representation” (Heidegger 1977, p. 142), for his idea of re-evaluating all values (Umwertung aller Werte) is simply meant to replace God, an objectively ultimate entity, with subjective facilities (the will to power, in its place of being valuable), but Nietzsche did not question the concept of value itself nor the mechanism of subjectification. To thoroughly examine such a mechanism, Heidegger described a certain kind of being as “presence-at-hand”, embodying how reality is viewed and experienced as one single layer (which, according to his analysis of the Cartesian worldview, “mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp” (Heidegger 1962, p. 129)) among the manifold totality of significances apprehended through Dasein’s transcendence. Concerning this part, Heidegger is distinguished from other critics of Cartesianism in that he did not simply aim to criticize the idea of res cogitans–res extensa; rather, he considered it a necessary mode of being and sought to understand the rationality of its formation; for instance, how the uncanny mood generated from being-toward-death motivated Dasein to pursue a sense of certainty by securing reality as a representation, a theme of Being and Time.

(2)

At the constructive level, he kept examining various forms of being unrestricted by the subject value-representation–object chain in philosophy, mythology, art, poetry, and everyday life, initiating an experimental discussion of the extent to which humans and things can be linguistically coded in their co-existence as organic spatial-temporal units. In these units, reality is fluid and is defined in terms of the ever-changing meanings disclosed in the light of “care” at every moment; that is, the ephemeral organisms of signification, which dissolve the traditional notion of reality founded upon linear time and 3D space. Such a new way of conceptualizing reality has enabled the incarnation of the Earth in the world by bringing previously unnoticed signs and references that comprise the inconspicuous lower level of signification—which embraces much more non-determinacy, discreteness, and mysteries than the scientifically structured surface layer—into articulation. This is achieved by figuring out the all-rounded human-thing and human–human “involvements” through zur Sache selbst, such as distinguishing usefulness from values, and correspondingly, “readiness-to-hand” from “presence-at-hand”.

In the following sections, I demonstrate why Heidegger’s project of linguistically redefining the world has the potential to bring about re-enchantment in the established context of signification. I argue that compared to seeking a complete renewal of history4 on the condition of subverting the entirety of Western thinking, turning inward to the inconspicuous, spatial-temporal units hidden in the existing world helps us to realize the possible re-enchantment that Heidegger implicitly called for, or using the word he borrowed from Holderlin’s “Patmos”: “salvation” (Heidegger 1971, p. 115). The inconspicuous spatial-temporal units are composed of “readiness-to-hand”, the “handiness” of which manifests the nature of categorial beings in their relation to Dasein: usefulness. Further, as Heidegger’s definition of usefulness is in a de-subjectified system of signification, the usefulness he discovered is essentially different from (and more comprehensive than) the practical effectiveness of employed objects, based on which the value of beings is judged from a positivist angle. I maintain that by shedding light on the usefulness of categorial beings and investigating their non-Cartesian origin in a broader linguistic ecosystem—the thing5—Heidegger strongly challenged the objectifying procedure of positive scientism leading to pragmatism, which (as a product of “faciality”) simply equates the worthwhileness of categorial beings to the success of their application.

2. What Is a Categorial Being?

Heidegger defined the essence of the “thing” as “gathering”, (Heidegger 1971, p. 172), which is equivalent to his interpretation of the Greek notion of logos (Heidegger 2014b, p. 179). However, the exact process of such a gathering remains unclear. It is clear that a single infrastructure of signification—the reference of A to B—is not sufficient to identify a thing, as references are constantly starting and stopping, making it impossible to create a persistent concept. Indeed, the idea of a “persistent concept” itself is questionable insofar as it assumes the existence of an ultimate reality. According to Heidegger’s arguments, this is fundamentally a product of ontotheology, which he aimed to deconstruct using a time-space-based phenomenological perspective. Thus, when examining the essence of categorial beings, rather than trying to determine their unconditional factors as traditional philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes did, Heidegger was more interested in exploring the conditionality of their presence.

Numerous examples have been raised by Heidegger to demonstrate the conditionality of categorial beings. A typical example he frequently uses is the Sun, which has a constantly changing and space–time dependent outlook. To clarify the necessity of exploring thingness, Heidegger wrote the following in The Question Concerning the Thing (1935):

And the Sun which daily rises and sets and gives light is growing ever colder; our Earth must draw ever closer to it in order to retain the same degree of heat. And yet the Earth is moving away from the Sun, and rushing toward catastrophe, albeit in “timeframes” compared to which […] the few thousand years of human history on Earth signify not even one second. […] Now, which of these is the real sun? Which thing is the true thing—the shepherd’s sun or the astrophysicist’s? Or is the question badly put? And if so, why? How should we decide?

(Heidegger 2018, p. 9)

In this passage, Heidegger raises a classic ontological question: When a thing’s appearance does not match its substance, which one is true? This is a rephrasing of Descartes’ famous “bending pencil” problem: An intact pencil appears broken when placed in a glass of water. From this, he concluded that truth must be attained through clear and indubitable ideas. Descartes’ argument is founded upon undervaluing phenomena that cannot be ruled out as illusionary occurrences, or, in Heidegger’s words, “being as seeming”6. As objective idealists, Descartes and his followers viewed “truth” as nothing more than mathematically verifiable results and value as nothing more than “truth”. However, for Heidegger, the situation was more complex: without assuming the supremacy of transcendental values, the certainty of objective representations of entities, and an a priori link between value and truth, the universe embodies a gathering of diverse phenomena without any hierarchy, including those favored by rationalists. From Heidegger’s perspective, these particular kinds of phenomena are “presence-at-hand”, captured through the dualistic vision that categorizes the world into res extensa and res cogitans. Hence, in this reconfiguration of the world, Heidegger did not try to destroy the “picture” drawn by traditional metaphysicians and natural/social scientists, but rather attempted to undertake a more ambitious project: to contain them in his own story. Knowing this, we can further infer that Heidegger perceived all sensible phenomena as truths7. A more poetic illustration of this point can be found in Introduction to Metaphysics (1935):

Let us think about the sun. It rises and sets for us daily. Only very few astronomers, physicists, and philosophers directly experience this fact otherwise as the movement of the Earth around the Sun—and even they do so on the grounds of a particular, although rather widespread, conception. But the seeming in which Sun and Earth stand—for example, the early morning of a landscape, the sea in the evening, the night—is an appearing. This seeming is not nothing. Neither is it untrue. Neither is it a mere appearance of relationships that, in nature, are really otherwise. This seeming is historical, and it is history, uncovered and grounded in poetry and saga, and thus an essential domain of our world.

(Heidegger 2014b, p. 36)

The acceptance of the rich meaningfulness of appearances can well explain Heidegger’s intricate conception of truth, which considers errancy as part of truth and maintains truth’s essential belonging to the self-concealing, mystical mechanism at its core, which unceasingly generates errancy: “Truth, in its nature, is un-truth” (Heidegger 1971, p. 53). It then follows that, since the fundamental enigma of how beings come to be is unintelligible and there is no clear true/false distinction among various modes of existence, it is lawful to develop alternative narratives of reality to confront existing ones, as long as they provide solid, informative ideas about the nature of being. Thus, as far as I am concerned, in his examination of categorial beings, Heidegger created the concept of “readiness-to-hand” as opposed to “presence-at-hand”. Still using the example of the Sun, he stated, “thus the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places—sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated distinctively in terms of changes in the usability of what the Sun has bestowed” (Heidegger 1962, p. 137).

Further, by figuring out the nature of “readiness-to-hand”, he rediscovered the primary linguistic structure of usefulness that was long covered up by its unwarranted reduction to pragmatic effectiveness and hence values. Heidegger established that the essence of a thing’s “thingly character”—being useful—is constituted by the referentiality of “in order to”8 in Dasein’s circumspection. He indicated, in Dasein’s interaction with its equipment, that its work “bears with it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered”, and the equipment, in being useful, let Dasein “encounter already the ‘towards-which’ for which it is usable” (Heidegger 1962, p. 99). This is to say, through the action of using, not only are the function of the used and the user’s intention disclosed, but the whole “ontological genesis”—or in other words, a “manifold of such assignments” (Heidegger 1962, p. 97) that makes such an action possible—is implied. As Heidegger put it: “When we make use of the clock equipment, which is proximally and inconspicuously ready-to-hand, the environing nature is ready-to-hand along with it” (Heidegger 1962, p. 101). Moreover, the embodiment of Dasein’s dealings with its environment in its wholeness, through which beings appear in the “sight”9, has a flashback feature: because “what means what” is already known, the end of an action is always foreseen before it is carried out. This flashback feature is precisely an expression of the spatial–temporal qualities of a categorial being thus used.

Then, what is the significance of analyzing the manifested linguistic context—which generates the possibility of using a tool—in defining a categorial being?

Principally speaking, it connects a thing’s essence to the temporality and spatiality of Dasein, which is existential. This is to say, by discovering a phenomenal organization of “readiness-to-hand”, Heidegger started to explore how a categorial being could exist existentially, although he himself may not have realized this at first. The temporality of Dasein, as defined by Heidegger, is revealed “as the meaning of authentic care” (Heidegger 1962, p. 374). He wrote, “Dasein’s totality of Being as care means ahead-of-itself-already-being-in (a world) as Being alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). According to Heidegger, “ahead-of-itself” is grounded in the future, the “being-already-in” is present in the past, and the “being-alongside” is actualizing at present (Heidegger 1962, p. 375). This triple-structure, in Heidegger’s existential philosophy, is revealed as a unity in Dasein’s anticipation of what it is coming toward, conducted through authentic resoluteness. As he explained, such coming toward not only signifies Dasein’s “ownmost potentiality-for-Being”, but also includes its inclination to manipulate its world, manifested in the prediction of how the beings it is alongside should be:

Anticipatory resoluteness discloses the current Situation situation of the “there” in such a way that existence, in taking action, is circumspectly concerned with what is factually ready-to-hand environmentally. Resolute Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand in the Situation—that is to say, taking action in such a way as to let one encounter what has presence environmentally—is possible only by making such an entity present. Only at the Present (Gegenwart) in the sense of making present, can resoluteness be what it is: namely, letting itself be encountered undisguisedly by that which it seizes upon in taking action10.

Thus, in Dasein’s anticipation, categorial beings would be involved in an existential temporality: every sense made regarding a thing is necessarily coded into making present the pre-determined possibility of Dasein’s “Da”, or its “there-being”. Hence, in a categorial being’s encounter with Dasein, the categorial being is endowed with Dasein’s triple-structured temporality, that is, always coming toward what has already been estimated by Dasein. Essentially speaking, in this way, a thing is made living through “care”, and hereby plays a role in “care”. Perhaps this is why Heidegger referred to the following sentence—an expression of Dionysius the Areopagite adopted by Meister Eckhart—to characterize the entanglement between man and things: “Love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves” (Heidegger 1971, p. 174).

Moreover, since temporality and spatiality are inseparable in Heidegger’s philosophy, in building up a common temporality shared by man and things, a common spatiality would also develop in referential totality. The common spatiality is embodied in an existential activity that Heidegger called de-severance, which he defined as “making the remoteness of something disappear” (Heidegger 1962, p. 139). He specified that de-severance is “a circumspective bringing close—bringing something close by, in the sense of procuring it, putting it in readiness, having it to hand” (Heidegger 1962, pp. 139–40). He also claimed that “in Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness” (Heidegger 1962, p. 140). However, Heidegger carefully differentiated this existential bringing close from the point-to-point movements in the purely physical sense, as shown in the statement “remoteness never gets taken as a distance (Ibid.). Further, by highlighting the example of the radio, he implied that de-severance does not require an actual motion, but can be a kind of abstract occupation of something/somewhere far away, made possible purely by knowing about it:

With the ‘radio’, for example, Dasein has so expanded its everyday environment that it has accomplished a de-severance of the ‘world’—a de-severance which, in its meaning for Dasein, cannot yet be visualized.

(Ibid.)

In sum, in Heidegger’s examination of the temporal-spatial structure of a specific type of categorial being—“readiness-to-hand”—a novel narrative of thingness is created to encapsulate a more primordial mode of existence compared to “objective reality” within the system of signification. In addition, this narrative (which is conducted in a hermeneutic phenomenological vision) has replaced the traditional narrative of rationalistic idealism by incorporating the latter into itself: accurately speaking, taking representational thinking as an inevitable historical phenomenon among the manifold meaningfulness of the world. On this basis, the problem of modern nihilism could be overcome without abolishing the philosophy giving rise to it, but, by penetrating into the soil that conceals the roots of such a philosophy, Dasein could gain all-inclusive insight into the aletheia/lethe interplay through the referential totality that composes itself and its world, which are essentially identical to each other inasmuch as both of them are “care”. However, up until this point, our analysis still cannot answer the question: How might the new temporal-spatial narrative of thingness contribute to a possible re-enchantment of the world?

To further explore this issue, I propose an experiment in the next section where I reverse the position of humans and things based on the assumption that because the two kinds of beings are in a symmetrical relationship, they are interchangeable with each other. The reason for saying that a human and a thing are interchangeable is transparent: As a realm of openness, a human contains the senses of multiple temporal-spatial units in relation to things, and vice versa. Seen from a phenomenological angle, a thing, in relation to humans, likewise takes their shared referential units into its own openness, which is the foundation for forming what middle Heidegger called die Gestalt, which in turn makes the whole intertwined appearance of world-earth organicity in a work of art. This experiment may challenge earlier Heidegger’s existential/categorial classification of beings, but is supported by his later idea that thinghood is incarnated enough to take actions upon humans. Heidegger implicitly expressed this idea, such as when he stated in his Freiburg lectures of 1951–1952, “we stand before a tree in bloom […] and the tree stands before us. […] The tree and we meet one another. […] Did the tree come first to stand and face us, so that we might come forward face-to-face with it?” (Heidegger 1968, pp. 41–42). Further, I show that this experiment (to view a thing as more of a “master” than a human) is in line with Heidegger’s own thinking during his “turn”, and may even explain why he became interested in a particular type of thing with immortal life—works of art—in his middle period.

3. The Immortalization of Things

In the first two divisions of Being and Time (1927), Heidegger’s examination of the human/thing relationship is still within a singular “world”, that is, the totality of significances opened as one independent “Da”. Although he considered the co-existence of multiple consciousnesses in his notion of “Dasein-with”, how an entity could simultaneously make sense in several consciousnesses has not been investigated. Granted, the primary task of Being and Time is to develop a fundamental ontology, and its restriction to that with which it is concerned—an exclusive “mineness” embodied as “my ownmost possibilities” constituting Dasein and its world—is reasonable. However, after the delineation of Dasein’s spatiality and ecstatic temporality (which is successfully completed in Divisions I and II), the focus of his phenomenological inquiry should have been changed from the study of Dasein to the study of being as such. To put it more accurately, as clearly stated in Section 5 of this book, his original purpose was to study being as such; studying Dasein is only an inevitable means to that end.11 This purpose is re-emphasized as a series of questions in the last section of Division II:

The existential-ontological constitution of Dasein’s totality is grounded in temporality. Hence the ecstatic projection of Being must be made possible by some primordial way in which ecstatic temporality temporalizes. How is this mode of temporalizing of temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way which leads from primordial time to the meaning of Being? Does time itself manifest itself as the horizon of Being?

(Heidegger 1962, p. 488)12

These grand questions may have made it difficult for the earlier-middle Heidegger to elaborate on them using the current system of metaphysical language, leading him to abandon the planned Division III of Being and Time.13 However, given his continued interest in the intended theme of Division III, it is not surprising to think that he kept the proposed idea in his mind and connected it to his later writings. In discussions about what Division III might have been, some scholars argue that that this unfinished volume was completed in other forms (Sheehan 2015) or that Heidegger’s thinking about it at least anticipated his works after Being and Time (Dahlstrom 2015). I support this hypothesis. However, unlike scholars who approach this issue from a macro and transcendental perspective (e.g., Thomas Sheehan viewed Heidegger’s later idea of Ereignis as his answer to all questions about being as such) (Sheehan 2014), I investigate it by examining a more micro and empirical unit, that is, the thing.

It is almost obvious that on the basis of the theory and worldview of Being and Time, the study of things, or categorial beings, is the most efficient and effective way to explore the horizon of time beyond a singular “Da” standing for a mortal’s consciousness. This “Da” would end as the mortal dies, but the thingness contributed by him to the thinghood is still going to be part of the things’ lives. As William James noticed, a jonquil in blossom, if cherished in a piece of poetic work, would be memorized and appreciated by countless late-coming readers; this is almost all about what Wordsworth did. Some of the stars observed and named for the first time by scientists, even though their bodies may have disappeared in the physical sense, would continue to shine in astronomical records and even in astrological charts. Furthermore, what is most interesting regarding things is that the senses constituting them would not only be archived and reserved, but also aggregated and combined, generating a living culture (even a civilization) of their own. Plato’s sun differs from the Sun in the Bible, but both of them would be remembered by those who have inherited the classic traditions. One might think of the “form of beauty” while looking at the Sun, while it is equally possible that what comes to mind is Ecclesiastes 1:5: “The Sun also rises, and the Sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose”.

Therefore, I believe—and this is a point that is entirely Heideggerian, but Heidegger himself did not explicitly state it in his works—that within a thing that has experienced the lives of multiple mortals, there is a living multi-worldness. Moreover, insofar as in each moment a world is nothing but making present the “care”—Dasein’s ecstatic temporality in its finiteness—at that moment, a thing can “grow” by collecting moments at which it encounters with human beings. In this way, it would not only be shuttling between, and gathering, the worlds of contemporaries, but also building up a geology of worlds throughout history. This construction of multi-worldness as thingness, from my perspective, is exactly how “time itself manifests as the horizon of Being”. As time flies, Dasein is temporizing itself; in Dasein’s self-temporizing, its pre-determined possibilities come true as its world. As Dasein is procuring categorial beings encountered in its world through de-severance, categorial beings are at the same time procuring the ecstatic temporality of Dasein. Then, the ecstatic temporalities thus deposited and living on in the thinghood become history. From microscopic to macroscopic, the horizon of Being shows spectral diversification. Viewed from this angle, tracing human consciousness in things is as significant as (or even more significant than) tracing things in human consciousness.

Hence, it is rather reasonable to pursue a thing-centered conception of reality. This method is consistent with Heidegger’s tendency to describe a reversed version of a human-thing relationship in his later years. As we can see in “The Thing”, unlike what he portrays in Being and Time—that is, the being of entities is completely dependent on Dasein insofar as Dasein had conditioned their uncoveredness (he claimed that “before there was any Dasein, there was no truth; nor will there be any after Dasein is no more”)14—in his depiction of the Fourfold, the thing is thought to be a holder of mortals as well as the sky and earth that they dwell with. This is not to say, of course, that Heidegger abandoned his assumption that beings cannot be independent of Dasein. In the new, more developed paradigm of thingness, the being—or uncoverenedness—of thinghood is still made possible by Dasein, yet Dasein has become more of a collective concept here, which keeps dying as every single individual constituting it dies, but at the same time lives forever. As long as there is one consciousness that illuminates a thing alive, the being of the thing is guaranteed. Moreover, as shown in the example of the jug, during the evolution of the Dasein-deriving involvements gathered around the thing, the collective fate of human beings would be reflected in the thing’s concentration of the inferential totality shared by them all. This fate, which is normally first brought into intelligibility in the light of “readiness-to-hand”, has the potential to further manifest mortals’ inherent connection to the divine:

The gift of the pouring out is drink for mortals. It quenches their thirst. It refreshes their leisure. It enlivens their conviviality. But the jug’s gift is at times also given for consecration. If the pouring is for consecration, then it does not still a thirst. It stills and elevates the celebration of the feast. The gift of the pouring now is neither given in an inn, nor is the poured gift a drink for mortals. The outpouring is the libation poured out for the immortal gods. […] To pour a gush, when it is achieved in its essence, thought through with sufficient generosity, and genuinely uttered, is to donate, to offer in sacrifice, and hence to give.

(Heidegger 1971, p. 170)

In this way, the consciousness of a singular human being is no longer the sole master of a universe—although in its ownmost being-toward-death it may remain so—but has become a resident of a larger, more enduring universe that has an internal sacred dimension.15 This universe, as a preserved physis (i.e., the uttered Nature) is contained in the thing. Inasmuch as the jug is used by someone, the universe will continue to exist. Likewise, any handicraft might once be part of its maker’s world, and with the emergence of referential totality, it would contain its maker’s world. Then, it might be part of its user’s world, and in the same way, it would contain its user’s world. Then one day, it might be present in front of me … in such a manner, an eternal loop forms: A man has his things, and a thing has its men. In the light of thinging, Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, which was initially about a single mortal’s life, became historicized.

Concerning the sacred dimension, though it literally appears as the narratives of heavenly beings and is frequently referred to by Heidegger in his writings as God and gods, viewed in the whole context of his phenomenology, Heidegger’s mention of that which is divine is less of a theological issue (e.g., justifying the existence of God and gods, as Descartes did) and more of an existential one. This observation is in line with what we clarified about disenchantment in Section 1—Theology itself arises from reducing the conceptualization of faith to a positive science. Therefore, to restore enchantment, one must venture beyond theology and delve into the philosophical essence of “Enframing”, where understanding inadvertently obscures primordial temporality. Moreover, as elaborated in Contributions to Philosophy (1936–1940), Heidegger takes human articulation of divine beings in the history of ontotheology as a way of transcendence, that is, of sensing beyond the sensible and connecting to what might be representationally called supersensible (by Kant, for example): “When we speak of God and gods, we think—according to a long-standing habit of representation—in that form which still indicates primarily and above all the multi-faceted name of ‘transcendence.’ By this term one means that which transcends extant beings, including human beings. Even where particular ways of transcending and of transcendence are denied, still, this way of thinking itself cannot be denied” (Heidegger 2012, p. 28). That is to say, for Heidegger, the gathering of meanings (logos) related to the divine is primarily an expression of Dasein’s fundamental existential condition: its inherent search for the invisible foundation beyond the grasp of all things in terms of physical, perceptible qualities such as shape, color, and smell, spanning from physis to meta-physis. The essential task, then, in order to dispel the obscuration inadvertently engendered by “clearing”, is to first recover the authentic essence of this existential condition.

Building upon this premise, we are compelled to inquire about the existential nature of enchantment. How is it embedded within everyday accessible things and how does it retain the potential for awakening? If transcendence surpasses the mere physical manifestation of “extant beings” in consciousness, and what we seek—beyond ontotheology—is not a specific form or spirit within the realm of ideas but rather the projection of an obscure beyng itself, one that has been supplanted by form or spirit through the lenses of Platonists, Christians, and Cartesians. Then, this projection, being cognitively inaccessible, can only be vaguely envisioned through the effects it manifests in the phenomenal world. When the envisioned projection is theorized as the common fate of a group of people, it gives rise to theology and metaphysics, while in its pre-ontological form, it exists in the realm of free imagery interconnected through intuition, composing poetry and saga.

In the manifold transcendence, the territory of the Earth, as conceived by Heidegger, remains a constant destination—a withdrawing concealment that “carries an abyss”, (Heidegger 2014a, p. 96) according to his reference to Hölderlin. This abyss establishes intangible boundaries that define the finite nature of all beings, encapsulating their openness. Mythologically, it finds its prototype in the imagery of a “subterrestrial”, “supraterrestrial” (Heidegger 1992, p. 118) wasteland—the region of lethe in which memories are erased before souls return to the mundane world. In Parmenides (1942), Heidegger explored this concept in his commentary on Plato, retelling the myth of Er in Book X of Republic. Er’s journey through Hades, his witnessing of post-death rewards and punishments based on virtue, and his subsequent departure from past life in lethe (Er didn’t drink from the “unmindfulness” river but saw others do), are among the earliest and most magnificent poetic expressions of man’s transcendental knowledge of the power of the sacred to restrict the consciousness of the living. In an existential sense, however—going back to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology discussed in Section 2—what makes the abyss appear as a symbol of the finiteness of existence is anticipation in the most discrete, fleeting, and angst-ridden situations: Dasein, authentically circumspective of all the possibilities with which it is endowed, anticipates its ownmost impossibility of being possible at all.

This is probably why, when Heidegger elaborates on “Dasein is its world existingly”, he asserts that “the world is transcendence” (Heidegger 1962, pp. 416–17). The fear and awe of “not-being” evoked by transcendence naturally melt into the temporal-spatial units opened up through Dasein as its world, culminating in the closure of each transient moment. This provides a further basis for the understanding of thingness from an existential and meta-physis perspective, which delineates the essence of things as standing-over-against in relation to the happening of Dasein as the condition of their very revelation. In his reading of Kant, Heidegger recognizes the nature of the thing as a “composed homogeneity” (Heidegger 2018, p. 139) dependent on the enigmatic unfolding of space and time, which implies that Dasein (here synonymous with its world) is also a “miracle” in which the realm of entities eludes cognitive faculties while affecting the sensible out of its own freedom. The temporal and spatial determination of being-in-the-world, as sketched in Section 2, is rooted in “care” bounded up with using, which results in an “inbetweenness” of man and thing. Heidegger depicts this “inbetweenness” as a self-contained circular structure, like the ancient symbol Ouroboros: “This Between, as anticipation, reaches beyond the thing and likewise back behind us. Grasping-ahead (Vor-griff) is casting-back” (Heidegger 2018, p. 167). This statement comes from Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s First Critique, which, following Kant, asks why synthesis of the a posteriori is possible a priori. Given the complexity of the theoretical clarification, I will not probe into the issues of causality and intelligibility at this time. My intention is simply to underscore Heidegger’s proposition that things, as tangible phenomena (facticity), derive their interactions and involvements with human beings (in alignment with Dasein’s ecstatic temporality) from their own essence. In doing so, he reveals the elusive foundation of existence as the governing force that facilitates the emergence and regulates the retreat of finite unconcealedness—an idea that bears a resemblance to Kant’s concept of the “purposiveness of Nature”.

Therefore, transcending mere “objects”, Dasein’s embrace of its existence, as illuminated in the “appropriating mirror-play” (Heidegger 1971, p. 177) of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities—thinging—allows it to enter the sacred realm of Being. Rather than directly seeing a heavenly realm (which is cognitively impossible), Being perceives the possible power of “God” through its effects limiting the world of phenomena: finiteness. Dasein thus intensifies the transience of life, giving rise to unsettling moods that defy clear articulation. This aspect distinguishes Heidegger’s conception of reality from earlier metaphysicians who failed to take into account the non-thematic modes of being, whether it be Plato, Descartes, or Kant (with whom he may have much in common), for he sees existence as a time-space that can never be fully established, let alone repeatedly experienced (in a cross-conscious manner), except in the non-thematic, trivial activities of Dasein. Thematic constructions always seek a purified formal structure, whereas the act of everyday speculation involves impure semantics and the perplexity of their endings, such as a sigh at the fulfillment or failure of an “in-order-to” and the wearing out or abandonment of “handiness”. These moments, in their closure, become indicators of the impenetrable earth and the land of Hades below, converging into the destiny of things: tools made of clay originally come from the dark soil and will eventually return to it. Dasein’s connection to the mystical, or predestination, is thus manifested through thinging.

In his criticism of modern science and technology, Heidegger made clear that many meanings once belonging to thinghood are lost in the process of machination. The nature of things is decaying and eroded. Still, in the example of the jug, he stated, “the pouring of the gush, once its nature withers, can become a mere pouring in and pouring out, until it finally decays into the dispensing of liquor at the bar” (Heidegger 1971, p. 171). This means that today, not only can people seldom see the feast for the gods through a jug, but the whole profoundness of “pouring” is no longer visible. Underlying the prevalence of positivistic scientism, human beings tend to refuse to seek meanings beyond “values” that have been so keenly attached to the success of application. This causes an ignorance of the true meaning of usefulness, manifested as “readiness-to-hand”, which is closest and free of any value judgement. As Heidegger indicated, “we failed to give thought to what the jug holds and how it holds” (Heidegger 1971, p. 169), which signifies a historical amnesia. This is spurred on by science becoming more hegemonic, and also, as fewer and fewer people can touch their worlds in a de-subjectified way that our ancestors used to experience through circumspection, anticipation, and de-severance. The feeling of the human/thing symbiosis is dismissed and abandoned, especially the most primary interactions emerging as the basic temporal-spatial units, which meaningfully reorganize both Dasein’s and the thing’s worlds at the first moment of speculation. Heidegger asked: “What is nearness?” (Heidegger 1971, p. 169). Apparently, he viewed this question as being far from answerable. Beginning in The Question Concerning the Thing where he states that a thing’s essence is defined by its particularity—“Each thing is in each case this and no other” (Heidegger 2018, p. 10)—Heidegger is actually telling an esoteric story about the “once-in-life-time” usually neglected by those who consider everything as measurable and reproducible. This story is about the “this”, the “nearness”, and the “handiness”, which compose the everydayness16 of space and time. Unfortunately, in the modern era, such “this”, “nearness”, and “handiness” often only become noticeable when the things we are so familiar with (which we tend to overlook) are no longer functional. As analyzed by Heidegger in his notion of obtrusiveness, when a tool in need is missing (i.e., in its “un-readiness-to-hand”), it shows up in a way “disturbing to us” that “enables us to see the obstinacy of that which we must concern ourselves [with] in the first instance before we do anything else”17.

The problem of forgetting “readiness-to-hand” thus leaves room for remembering usefulness, as well as all the enigmatic meanings dormant in the time-space enclosed within a tool. If, at some unexpected point when “handiness” suddenly disappears, the forgotten thinghood becomes more obtrusive than ever, then the grasp of these moments is exactly part of what Heidegger called “salvation”: the reopening of an underlying “world” (part of the Earth) that was concealed by machination. In “What are Poets for?” Heidegger cites Hölderlin’s poem to highlight a danger that has made the World “unhealable”, “unholy”, and “assaulting man’s nature in his relation to Being itself” (Heidegger 1971, p. 115), and he thinks such danger, where what “grows [is] also what saves” (Ibid.) can be saved by an “Open” enabling the “having-seen” of the danger (Heidegger 1971, p. 119)—here he refers to Rilke’s lines: “and that, when we saw it threatening, we turned it so into the Open …”(Ibid.). For Heidegger, the concept of the Open consisted of that which dissolves objectification, grants safety, and sheds light on the “in being”, which he explained as “present in the unconcealed” (Heidegger 1971, p. 120). Since “handiness” is the nature by which useful things reveal their “being-in-themselves” (Heidegger 1962, p. 98) in Heidegger’s phenomenology, an Open disclosing the “in being” must have “handiness” as a moment of existence in its embracement.

This line of reasoning also explains why, in Heidegger’s philosophy of art, a work—which he also defined as the Open—is always interpreted in terms of its thingly character embodied in its role of being useful. A typical example is Van Gogh’s shoes, based on which Heidegger wrote three pages to demonstrate how “the equipmentality of equipment” discloses both the world and the Earth: “This equipment belongs to the earth, and it is protected in the world of the peasant woman”18. In more detail, the shoes on canvas make the “ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal”, the “uncomplaining anxiety as to the certainty of bread” and the “shivering at the surrounding menace of death” (Ibid.) come into presence in the world. The thing thus has an incarnated World in it, and the World, therefore, has an incarnated Earth in it. Notably, human beings also dwell on the Earth and let such incarnations happen through the strife to open what is closed under their feet: the mystery of finitude, rebirth, and the cause of consciousness. This is what the Open is all about, and, as that which opens the Open, “handiness” is thus endowed with an artistic nature by virtue of the man who discovered and preserved it. Such a turning of “handiness” into art has also deconstructed the ontotheological cornerstone of traditional aesthetics—the Cartesian view of beauty, which sees the beautiful as representations of an ultimate reality—by blurring the longstanding distinction between handicrafts and artwork.

Now we should ask: at this point, is it still accurate to consider the “thing” a categorial being? Can it be considered an existential being now that it has been transformed into a grand Open? From my point of view, it remains true (and will always be true) that without Dasein, things cannot open the Open on their own, so the physis that is preserved is still the polymer of the “in-order-to”-based spatial–temporal units (making Dasein’s “care” present), which transiently occurs in Dasein’s daily life, although it may be manifested in the light of a being other than Dasein. Nonetheless, the dependence of a thing’s being on Dasein, as well as its categorial essence, does not restrict it from serving as a safeguard (or even a ruler) of existentiality. In fact, precisely because a thing does not have to be as finite as Dasein (it can preserve the worlds of multiple generations like a “multiplication” of Dasein), it is possible to overcome the power of lethe—which would continually erase every single mortal’s knowledge of its existentiality, but at the same time allow latecomers who can truly see a thing to intuitively understand the mystery of existence—in an unlimited temporal-spatial scope. Existentiality, which has thus become eternally recurring, would be incarnating the thinghood to make it a potential “other”. Using Freud’s term, the “returning repressed” repetitively re-enchants the human community.