EREIGNIS

Early in the “Letter on Humanism” (GA9) Heidegger writes:

Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think are living creatures (das Lebe-Wesen), because on the one Hand they are in a certain way most closely akin to us (uns . . . am nächsten verwandt), and on the other hand are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence (Wesen) by an abyss (durch einen Abgrund). In opposition to them, it might also seem as though the essence of divinity were nearer to us than what is shockingly alien in living creatures (das Befremdende der Lebe-Wesen); nearer, namely, in an essential remoteness (Wesensferne) which, while remote, is nonetheless more familiar to our eksistent essence than our scarcely conceivable, abysmal bodily kinship with the beast. (GA9:W, 157; BW, 206)

[(Pode-se presumir que, de todos os entes, que são, o ser vivo, é para nós, o mais difícil de ser pensado. Pois, se de um lado, ele nos é o mais próximo, de outro lado, está separado de nossa Essência ec-sistente por um abismo. Quer-nos parecer até que a Essência do Divino nos seja mais próxima do que o estranho ser vivo; mais próxima, a saber, numa distância de Essência, que, como distância, é mais familiar a nossa Essência ec-sistente do que o parentesco abismal de nosso corpo com o animal, que mal poderemos pensar completamente. (Sobre o humanismo. Tr. Carneiro Leão) )]

I shall pass over in silence the difficulties involved in translating all these Wesen that Heidegger conjures: Lebe-Wesen, the shockingly alien “living creature” to which we are akin and in which Aristotle (in contrast to Heidegger) finds “the greater nearness”; ek-sistentes Wesen, the “essence” (namely, “ours”) that “stands out” ecstatically into the clearing, the nothing, the granting of time and being; das Wesen des Göttlichen, the “essence” (or, dare we say, once and for all, the “creature”) of the godlike, which, however ethereally remote it may be, seems far more familiar, domestic, vertraut, and “kitcheny” to us than what is so foreign, so startlingly alien, both fremd and befremdend, in the living creatures that dwell so uncannily close to us; and finally, Wesensferne, the “essential remoteness,” “remoteness of essence,” or perhaps “haunting presence” by which what is near seems far, and far near. Let me focus instead on the “abyss” that gapes twice in these few lines of Heidegger’s “Letter.” However akin to us (other) living beings may seem, they are “separated” from us “by an abyss,” durch einen Abgrund . And yet, by a bizarre doubling, this abyss of separation is now invoked to name the very proximity and affinity identified long ago by Aristotle, the nearness and kinship of the human and the bestial: Heidegger refers to our abysmal bodily kinship with the beast, abgründige leibliche Verwandtschaft.

[KRELL, David F. Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992]