Meaning, Excess, and Event

Richard Polt

Thomas Sheehans contribution to this inaugural volume is his latest

and perhaps best e,ort to promote a paradigm shift in Heidegger research.1 It is di/cult to gauge the trends in the large quantity of such
research that is produced every year, so I do not know whether a new
paradigm is emerging, but there is no doubt that Sheehans voice is
one that deserves to be heard. With extraordinary erudition and care,
always keeping in mind Heideggers grounding in the ancient and medieval traditions, Sheehan makes a strong case for understanding the
question of being as a question about meaning. This approach has immediate advantages over several others. As opposed to interpretations
that immerse themselves only in Heideggers treatment of this or that
particular topic, Sheehan always keeps in view the guiding theme of
Heideggers thought. In contrast to some readers who repeat the shibboleth being without ever venturing to interpret it, Sheehan provides a powerful Vorgri' that fruitfully opens up the texts. Sheehans
approach is also a salutary counterbalance to quasi-theistic readings
that hypostasize Big Being.2 While very few readers explicitly violate
Heideggers warnings against identifying being with God, too many
interpretations do seem to speak of being as if it were a supreme entity
or extramundane force that acts upon humanity. In Sheehans reading,
being is nothing more and nothing less than the meaningfulness of
things in our world their signi-cant availability, their discoveredness
within the disclosure of the open. Heidegger, as Sheehan reads him,
attends to this meaningful openness and -nds its source not in some

Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual,  ():  

Meaning, Excess, and Event

higher and hidden thing, but in our own -nite nature as beings who
are both thrown and projecting.
While I -nd Sheehans paradigm genuinely illuminating, I will
make the case here that the paradigm should be expanded in order to
address two further elements of Heideggers question of being: excess
and event.3
First, Heidegger explores various ways in which meaning stands
in relation to non-meaning. He does not simply show us that beings are
meaningful; he also recognizes that beings are more than just meaning,
and that the threat of meaninglessness lurks just around the corner.
Meaning is exceeded by the di,erence of beings from interpretation
and by the possibility of interpretive collapse and these issues, too, are
part of the question of being. I will use the term excess to refer to such
ways in which the question of being concerns not only meaning but also
what is other than meaning, or exceeds it. One main kind of excess is
the existence of beings: in addition to having meaning, beings are (there
is something instead of nothing). But since the word existence has
been used in various more speci-c senses from existentia as presence at
hand to Heideggers own Existenz that could distract from our present
discussion, I will prefer the broader and less freighted excess.
Secondly, Sheehans description of Daseins nature as involving
thrown projection a priori does not account for the proposal that Heidegger makes at least in his so-called middle period, the s: das
Seyn west als das Ereignis, be-ing essentially happens as the appropriating event, and more precisely as the event of the grounding of the
there.4 There seem to be a particularity and a founding character in
das Ereignis that do not -t comfortably with interpretations of the human condition as structured a priori. If Dasein is the entity whose own
being is an issue for it, we could speak of das Ereignis as the event in
which our own being becomes an issue for us. This event is itself a sort
of excess, an excess unlike the existence of beings. Ereignis is not itself
an entity, but it is not being as meaning either. It is the meaning-less
or self-concealing giving of being as meaning.



G>8=6G9 EDAI

Excess and event are crucial to historicity. Encounters with excess

can develop into crisis points, historical events in which meaning is refreshed or transformed; such events open new realms of meaning that,
in turn, make it possible for us to encounter excess afresh. From the
inconspicuous tremors that make small adjustments in our world to the
ultimate event that would found a momentous site,5 the happening of
history cannot be understood purely in terms of meaning.
It has to be said at the outset that just as a scienti-c paradigm cannot be justi-ed simply by the observed facts, an interpretive paradigm
for philosophical texts cannot be justi-ed simply by the words in those
texts. Philosophy demands that we think for ourselves about the issues at
stake, and that we bring our own thoughts to the texts in order to learn
from them. A discussion of a paradigm for reading philosophy is itself
already philosophy, and for that reason it can always be contested.
MEANING

Being and Time announces from the start that it is asking about the
meaning of being.6 But this announcement is rather unclear. Is it simply
the word being that is Heideggers topic? Or is his topic the theme that
the word indicates? If so, are the quotation marks meant to suggest that
the word being is less than adequate to this theme? Or is the theme
not being itself, but the meaning of being? What, then, does meaning
mean? The thesis of the work, the answer to its question, is that time is
the horizon for any possible understanding of being. Is time, then, the
meaning of being? But what is time, and what is a horizon?7
Heidegger .eshes out some of these formal indications when he
explains being phenomenologically: at -rst and for the most part, being
does not show itself that is, it is not revealed thematically or directly,
but lies in the background of the overtly self-showing phenomena.
However, being can be thematized: it can be revealed as having already
been unthematically showing itself as the meaning and ground of
the overt phenomena, and as belonging to these phenomena.8



Meaning, Excess, and Event

The term meaning (Sinn) is not explained until , where

Heidegger de-nes it as that in terms of which something can be understood.9 Here understanding does not primarily mean a cognitive
representation, but an ability to discover the possibilities of things in
terms of our own possible ways to be.10 Asking about the meaning of
something, then, is the same as trying to understand the thing, to discover it in its own proper possibility. For example, the meaning of a
shoe as such is its speci-c kind of equipmentality, its usability for the
protection of our feet. This usability makes it possible for the shoe to
show itself to us as a shoe. The shoes usability would then constitute
its being.
One of Heideggers favorite techniques for revealing being is the
interpretation of certain overt phenomena as de-cient modes of a
more fundamental phenomenon. For example, the absence of historical research is a de-cient mode of historicity; indi,erence to others is a
de-cient mode of caring for them.11 These are exceptions that prove the
rule: their function is to extrapolate an ontic concept (such as history or
care) into an ontological one. Heidegger hopes that his re-description of
the ontic negatives (lack of history, lack of caring) as de-cient ontological positives will draw our attention to underlying, background phenomena that have always already been making it possible for the overt
positive and negative phenomena to show themselves. Then care, for
instance, no longer refers to a particular state that we may or may not
be in, but to the human condition as such, and we may recognize that
it is only thanks to this condition that we can become careless, carefree,
or uncaring. (A shoe is neither caring nor uncaring, but altogether lacks
ontological care.)
So far, Heideggers Sein seems to correspond most closely to the
Greek or as used to mean a pregiven nature or essence being what it was ( ), in the Aristotelian phrase.12 But Heidegger understands essence phenomenologically: the essence ()
of something allows it to present itself as itself (). The essence makes it possible for the thing itself to be shown as what it is.
Since things must be displayed to someone, without Dasein there is no



G>8=6G9 EDAI

possibility of display, and thus no essence (or meaning or being) in the

phenomenological sense.
Accordingly, Heidegger claims that without Dasein, there would
be no being (more precisely, being would not be given)13 and that
without Dasein, there would be no meaning: meaning is the framework of Daseins disclosedness.14 Similarly, Heidegger emphasizes that
there cannot be anything further that lies hidden behind being.15 Being is not a manifestation of the nonmanifest, but rather what enables
the manifestation of beings. If there were no manifestation, then being
would not go into hiding, like an undiscovered entity, but simply would
not occur at all.
Since being not only enables ontic phenomena to show themselves,
but is itself a phenomenon, it too stands in need of a meaning a context
that makes it possible for being to display itself. This is time as the horizon for being. Time is the ecstatic temporality of Dasein: its pressing
ahead into possibilities that are drawn from its factical thrownness,
thereby disclosing a world and encountering entities within it. The
term horizon in Being and Time seems to serve as a more technical
equivalent to meaning: it is that in terms of which something is capable of being understood. When Heidegger calls time a transcendental
horizon, he implies that it is the sole and necessary meaning in terms of
which we must understand being.16
The guiding question and thesis of Being and Time have now come
into focus. To seek the meaning of being and to -nd the horizon
of being in time is to reveal, in terms of our temporality, that which is
always already allowing us to reveal things as what they are.
So far, Sheehans paradigm works very well. The being of an entity
is its meaning, that is, the appropriate context that enables us to discover
the entity. More fundamental than any particular such discoveries is
the disclosure of the world, or the overall context of signi-cance;17 and
that disclosure is made possible by time, that is, the thrown projecting
of Dasein the -nite nature of the human condition.
In the present essay, Sheehan draws on Heideggers   lectures on the being of animals to illuminate our condition. Like (other)



Meaning, Excess, and Event

animals, we strive to reach out beyond the immediate. The human

projection of possible ways to exist resembles animal drive. In both
cases, striving discloses things: the animals desires reveal things to it
as desirable or undesirable; the human projection of possibilities reveals
things to us in their possibilities. The mystery of being, it seems, is
grounded in the humble reality of our living .esh.
The   lectures are notable for their sensitive attention to living things other than Dasein and for their respect for empirical science.
Sheehan has shown that we still have much to learn from these lectures. However, he presents the phenomenology of animals somewhat
more positively than Heidegger does. Without in any way resorting to
an evolutionist reductionism, which is all too popular today, Sheehan
leaves room for evolution and points out legitimate analogies between
humans and beasts. Heidegger, however, calls animals impoverished.18
His lectures remain true to the suggestion in Being and Time that the
being of Dasein must be interpreted -rst, and the being of animals
must be interpreted privatively.19 Their very life is, as it were, a de-cient
mode. Heidegger concludes that animals are not open to beings as beings at all, but only to beings as disinhibiting triggers for drives.20
What is it, then, to be open to beings as beings? Animals do discover
beings but they do not seem able to appreciate the fact that beings
are there to be discovered in the -rst place. An animal can be startled,
but not astonished. In astonishment, the familiar loses its self-evidence
and becomes surprising not as something new, but in the very wonder
of its original givenness. In part, as Sheehan puts it, astonishment is
wonder at the fact that things make sense! But there is also wonder
at the fact that things are there at all and this experience may actually
be provoked most e,ectively when things stop making sense smoothly
and we are plunged into an insight into our own ignorance.
Celebration is self-restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into
the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder the wonder
that a world is worlding around us at all, that there
are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we



G>8=6G9 EDAI

ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and

yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we
do not know all this.21
This too is part of the question of being: the wonder that there is
something at all, that there are beings instead of nothing, including
ourselves, even if the meaning of these beings is fragile or absent. The
being of Dasein can burst forth as a naked that it is and has to be. The
pure that it is shows itself, but the whence and the whither remain
in darkness.22
This side of the question of being involves what I will call excess
and event. These will prove to be indispensable elements of what, above
all, sets humans apart from animals according to Heidegger: history.
E XC ESS

The being of an entity, as its essence or meaning, is not itself that entity.
This is the famous ontological di,erence. Interpreted phenomenologically, it tells us that meaning enables the self-showing of entities,
but those entities are other than meaning, or exceed it. A shoe is not
the meaning of a shoe; the meaning of a shoe permits the shoe to show
itself both as meaningful and as exceeding meaning. If there were no
shoe to be found, then the horizons within which we interpret shoes
would be, in Husserlian terms, unful-lled intentions meanings without anything that showed up in their light.
In this regard, the ontological di,erence is linked to the distinction
between essence and existence. To explore the essence or meaning of a
thing is one project; to determine whether it exists is another. It might
seem, then, that we could neatly separate the two issues; the -rst is
ontological and the second is ontic, or the -rst is a question of meaning
and the second a question of fact.
However, in Greek, words such as and are used in both
contexts both for so-called essential questions and for existential
ones.23 According to one of the founding doctrines of analytic philosophy, a doctrine that ultimately stems from Kant, this dual usage is



Meaning, Excess, and Event

nothing but a confusion.24 Words such as being in Indo-European

languages are dangerously ambiguous, as they are used both in predication (that is, the attribution of meanings) and in the a/rmation of
existence. If we clearly separate these logical functions, the problem
of being as traditionally understood will dissolve.
Although he is no analytic philosopher, Sheehan too strives for a
clear, unambiguous focus that will obviate some of the traditional ambiguities in the word being. For Sheehan, Heidegger placed the problematic of being squarely within the parameters of meaning, so that we
can simply replace Sein with Sinn. Elsewhere Sheehan has even stated
that Heideggers focal topic never was being in any of its forms.25
Heidegger does have moments when he loses patience with the word
Sein, but typically he insists that he is retrieving the ancient question
of being, reviving its original impetus in the face of the distortions of
the tradition.26 This suggests that Heidegger would prefer to preserve
the ambiguities of that he sees the ancient complex of problems
as having some integrity that is worthy of thought.
Let me brie.y make an independent, non-Heideggerian case for
that integrity.27 Two main points militate against a complete divorce
between meaning and excess, a distinction that would treat these as
completely separable issues. (At this point I am concerned primarily with the fact that beings exist, as we would normally say but as
explained above, the word existence is over-determined, so I prefer
excess as a more neutral and broader term for non-meaning.)
(a) Although excess is not meaning, it presents itself to us in terms
of meaning: there are meanings of excess. There is always some meaningful way in which something is there for us or given to us. (As
Sheehan puts it, if we cannot make any sense of something, we cannot meet it.) What is other than meaning is for us meaningfully. For
example, I -nd a shoe I was looking for: Here it is! Even though the
shoe is not a meaning, and the meaning of shoeness in no way guarantees that I will -nd a shoe, when I -nd that there is a shoe there, this
is has a meaning (in this case, something like lying there available
and ready). Even the bare and abstract existential quanti-er, the x



G>8=6G9 EDAI

of symbolic logic, has meaning; its meaning is simply kept silent in

logic.28 In short, it makes a di,erence to us that there is a being instead
of nothing or rather, it makes a variety of meaningful di,erences to
us that there are beings instead of nothing.
(b) Conversely, the meaning of being always points beyond itself to
what exceeds meaning, to what cannot be exhausted by meaning. The
di,erences it makes that there is something instead of nothing point
us back to the sheer that there is. When I say, Here it is! I mean
not only that the shoe lies ready, but also that something other than
meaning is showing up now something that is available for me to
wear it, name it, and talk about it, but is not reducible to the meaning it
has for me. There is an interesting paradox here: is carries meaning,
but part of its meaning is precisely that what is cannot be exhausted
by any meaning, but exceeds it. Again, if I say the hammer is heavy,
to use one of Heideggers favorite examples, I am a/rming that something other than the mere meanings of hammerness and heaviness,
something that exceeds meaning an actual something that I can call
a heavy hammer is here. Note that this observation is not simply a
point about assertions; in nonlinguistic action, when I simply pick up
the hammer and feel its heft, I also recognize excess.
In short, excess and meaning bleed into each other: that which is, is
(a) meaningful to us, yet simultaneously (b) presents itself as exceeding
meaning, and this excess is itself part of its meaning as a being. Beings
show themselves as being more than how they show themselves.29 They
are meaningfully given as other than meaning.
The question of being should then involve both meaning and excess.
This is not to say that meaning and excess are both instances of some
overarching category of being, but that the problematic of being ought
to consider both meaning and excess, in their various relations. Furthermore, if we forget that meaning is entangled with excess and treat it as
a self-contained domain of its own, we run the risk of letting it stagnate.
While meaning will still serve to let things display themselves, this
display is likely to be a stereotyped semblance a rigid Egyptianism.30
An intimation of excess keeps meaning sharp and nimble.



Meaning, Excess, and Event

But how does the question of being involve both meaning and excess in Heideggers own texts? In several ways.
First, Heidegger takes the question of being broadly enough to include that-being. He often mentions the Da or that-it-is as a topic
worthy of thought. Often this thought takes the form of exploring the
meanings of excess my point (a) above. Even givenness already represents a categorial determination, as he puts it in his Jugendschriften.31
What does es gibt mean?32 The meanings of givenness, or excess, have
included the medieval existentia,33 the in itself,34 and Kants Position
or positing.35 Heidegger explores the genealogies of these concepts in
order to question meanings that have become calci-ed and are taken
for granted. Once we articulate the meanings of existentia and the like,
we can deconstruct them. These meanings have remained unnoticed
and unthreatened; they have tacitly interpreted excess without letting
the excess call them into question. Instead of genuinely acknowledging
excess, such concepts surreptitiously impose a concept of being usually, being as presence at hand.
In order to avoid such calci-ed thinking, the philosophical project
of making sense of being needs to be aware of the limits and fragility
of sense. The breakdown of meaning may be a particularly valuable
stimulant to thought, as when Heidegger writes that we must let the
mystery of Daseins being emerge so that we can fail more genuinely
and raise deeper questions.36 When signi-cance pales and trembles,
when meaning is revealed as contingent and vulnerable, excess hits us
and makes us capable of fresher philosophical insight. At such moments,
excess shines through within meaning, calling that very meaning into
question. A ground becomes accessible only as meaning, even if it is
itself the abyss of meaninglessness.37
Accordingly, Heidegger is interested in a variety of situations where
meaning falters in the face of excess. In the  war emergency semester, for instance, he considers experiences of unfamiliar things. A Senegalese tribesman faced with a lectern might take it as a magical thing,
as a shield, or simply as something he doesnt know what to make of
(something he cant get started with, in the German idiom).38 This raw



G>8=6G9 EDAI

experience of something is never a sheer absence of interpretation;

some meaning must always be operative in order for us to encounter
something at all. But in these limit situations, when meaning struggles and totters, the sheer there is the di,erence between something
and nothing comes alive. The es gibt is at its most powerful, and life is
at its most intense, when we shift from one world to another or when
we experience a moment passionately, rather than being settled -rmly
and comfortably within a world.39
This is especially the case in regard to the meaning of ones own
being. When the sense of my being trembles in anxiety, the excess of
my being is disclosed, in a way that makes it possible for me to become
deeper or more authentic. Anxiety discloses the naked that it [Dasein]
is and has to be.40 Anxiety allows me to encounter my thrownness,
which is ineluctably enigmatic resistant to meaning.41 That is, all the
possibilities I have for interpreting my thrownness (such as a religious
interpretation in terms of creation and fall, or a scienti-c interpretation in terms of evolution) are possibilities that I project on the basis
of thrownness, and must remain indebted to the raw experience that
here I am. This facticity is not an ontic fact which becomes available only within an interpretation.42 Facticity exceeds all interpretation,
all meaning.
Natures being as excess can also strike us, in a way that provides
a deeper glimpse into the nonhuman than we are usually a,orded.
In Being and Time, nature is primarily considered as material for
ready-to-hand entities (timber, leather, etc.) or as a present-at-hand
object of scienti-c fact-gathering. Clearly the former sense of nature
is more primordial than the latter, for Heidegger, but that is not to
say that it is ultimate. Nature as ready-to-hand is a phenomenon typical of everydayness, and is thus subject to the super-cial and clichd
sort of revelation that everydayness promotes. In one passage, Heidegger alludes to a further, more poetic sense of the power of nature.43
Later he proposes that nature can be contrary to meaning (widersinnig): natural catastrophes can intrude absurdly into Daseins sphere of
signi-cance.44 While Being and Time does not spell out the connection



Meaning, Excess, and Event

between poetic and non-sensical nature, I would suggest that poetic

interpretations of nature are deeper than the standard practical, technical, and theoretical interpretations precisely because the poet is open
to the mystery of nature as exceeding meaning. That mystery cannot
be reduced to any interpretation; it shows us its interpreted aspects
only the better to hide itself.
As we saw, Heidegger wants us to wonder not only at the givenness
of particular beings, at our individual facticity, and at the senselessness
of nature, but also at the existence of what is, as such and as a whole its
di,erence from nothing. The most powerful passage along these lines
may be the opening pages of Introduction to Metaphysics. With Leibniz,
Heidegger asks why there is something instead of nothing; unlike Leibniz, he does not seek a ground for all entities in a supreme entity and in
the principle of su/cient reason, but takes the question as an occasion
for inquiring into the meaning of being. This meaning, however, never
becomes simply an exposition of what beings mean, but remains linked
to the astonishment at the fact that beings exist in the -rst place. That
wonder at being as excess is essential to keeping being as meaning in
question, to challenging the very boundary between what counts as
something and what counts as nothing.45
On similar grounds, after the publication of the completed portions of Being and Time, Heidegger becomes uneasy with that texts
emphasis on meaning and understanding. As he sees it in retrospect,
the project ran the risk of transcendental thinking46 that is, Dasein,
like a Kantian subject, seemed to set the limits of what could count as
a being for it, so that apart from this set sphere of meaning, nothing
could become manifest. To counter this risk, Heidegger now stresses
facticity, which he had de-ned in Being and Time as a condition in
which a being can understand its own destiny as tied up with the beings that it encounters.47 Human beings are plunged not only into a
meaningful openness, but into a given opacity; they belong not only
to being as meaning, but also to beings, for they themselves are beings. Heidegger -rst proposes to explore this condition in his suggestive sketch of metontology (); metontology would fully recognize



G>8=6G9 EDAI

that the entity for whom beings have meaning is itself an entity, and
-nds itself amidst entities.48
Heidegger eventually articulates this condition in The Origin of
the Work of Art as the strife between earth and world. Meaning or
illumination (world) always depends on and refers to an uninterpreted
excess (earth) a that shadows . This is why truth is a
robbery, a struggle.49 In the artwork (and at other privileged sites),
truth takes place as the clash of earth and world.50 It is di/cult to de-ne
earth precisely, but that is the point: earth is resistance to de-nition,
resistance to discovery, resistance to sense and essence. It conceals itself
at the same time as it sustains the world of sense that tries, yet inevitably fails, to interpret it. (This point echoes the reference to nature as
widersinnig in Being and Time. Earth is, among other things, the
deeper non-sense of nature.) Meaning always has its points of friction
with the non-meaning on which it is based. Only when that friction
enters our awareness when the world struggles against the earth and
recognizes that it fails is a culture alive and creative.51
EVENT

As we have seen, Sheehan identi-es Heideggers being with meaning.

But what is Heidegger asking with regard to meaning? What is the
Seinsfrage? In Sheehans reading, the Heideggerian project is not simply
to articulate meaning, but to discover its ground. The basic question
of Heideggers thinking concerns how Sein/Anwesen comes about, i.e.,
comes to be disclosed a priori in human being.
I have just argued that meaning stands in various relations to nonmeaning, and that Heideggers Seinsfrage is broad enough to include
those relations. But, following Sheehans paradigm, we can still ask:
how does the meaning/excess complex the whole dynamic of relations
between sense and non-sense come about? I have found this paradigm
to be a very helpful guiding thread in interpreting Heideggers texts
from every period.



Meaning, Excess, and Event

However, Sheehans phrase comes to be disclosed a priori raises

a question. Does being actually come to be disclosed, in a happening or
event? Or is it disclosed a priori is it always in e,ect, so that we are
looking not for an event but for an essence?
In his present essay, Sheehan uses a good deal of event language.
With the appearance of human being, meaning dawned in the universe. Then things became meaningfully present. Once man is
possessed by the Promethean -re of intellect and language, human
history begins as a complex unfolding of meaningful lives.
What sort of beginning is this? Sheehans discussion of animals
suggests that he has in mind the gradual evolution of homo sapiens, an
evolution that at some point in the distant past brought us to the tipping
point where meaning surpasses animal desire. Now that we have passed
that point, meaning is a given, and it will be given as long as we remain
human. As Sheehan puts it in an earlier essay, Without us, there is no
open at all; but with us, the open is always a priori operative. beingopen is the ineluctable condition of our essence it is our fate, the
way we always already are.52 Consequently, If we can call Ereignis an
event at all, it is the a priori event of the opening up of the open.53
In my view this interpretation of Ereignis is not eventful enough,
at least in regard to Heideggers thought in the thirties. Sheehan has
proposed that a proper reading of the Beitrge could lead us to demystify
Heidegger, to focus on our always-already-operative openedness,
and to eliminate all the apocalyptic language the cosmic drama, the
mystical metaphors, the Teutonic bombast.54 But this reading would
surely go against the grain of the Beitrge an apocalyptic, mystical,
and bombastic text if there ever was one. Whether or not its rhetoric
is to our taste, we should consider the possibility that for Heidegger, at
least at that stage in his thinking, the rhetoric is necessary in order to
do justice to the Sache selbst.55
What is at stake, then, in the text subtitled Vom Ereignis? Twentytwo years after the publication of the Beitrge, English-speaking interpreters cannot even agree on whether Ereignis should be translated
as event.56 Heidegger himself has made the question more di/cult



G>8=6G9 EDAI

by denying, in several postwar texts, that Ereignis is an occurrence

(Vorkommnis) or happening (Geschehen, Geschehnis).57 But in  he
had characterized his development after Being and Time as a move
vom Seinsverstndnis zum Seinsgeschehnis,58 and the Beitrge describe
Ereignis as the greatest happening, the happening of owndom.59 I
have argued elsewhere that, at least in its external presentation, Heideggers thought oscillates between emphasizing universal structures
(Being and Time, some late texts) and emphasizing unique events (the
earliest lectures, the Beitrge and other texts of the s).60 Since Heideggers way of presenting his thought may not always be candid, the
hermeneutical problem is di/cult. But we can at least say that it is not
necessarily fair to judge the middle Heidegger of the s in terms
of the late Heideggers writings.61
What, then, does it mean to shift from the understanding of being to the happening of being? We can approach this shift in terms of
Heideggers treatment of time.
Being and Time addresses being through Daseins understanding,
that is, in terms of Daseins temporality as the horizon that allows the
phenomenon of being to display itself. Temporality is presented here as
an essential structure; the text does not raise the question of how time
itself might begin. In fact, it might seem that this very question is a
category mistake: how could there be a temporal origin of temporality?
As Heidegger says in , Time is earlier than any possible earlier of
whatever sort, because it is the basic condition for an earlier as such.62
It would seem that, as Sheehan puts it, the genesis of the space of
meaning is the structure of care a structure, not an event.
But as Heidegger becomes dissatis-ed with the transcendental tendencies in his thought, he turns toward a more eventful genesis. What
does it mean here to say that time is a horizon? we do not have the
slightest intimation of the abysses of the essence of time.63 When we
stop treating time as transcendental horizon, it becomes possible to seek
the event in which time begins. The primal fact is that there is
anything like temporality at all. The entrance into world by beings
is primal history pure and simple.64 Can one ask, How does time



Meaning, Excess, and Event

arise? Heidegger increasingly believes that one can, but he cannot

give the traditional metaphysical answer: through the deformation
and restriction of eternity.65
In order to address the question of the origin of time, Heidegger
needs a distinction between beginning (Beginn) and inception
(Anfang). The beginning is left behind as soon as it occurs, it disappears as the happening progresses. But the inception, the origin, is
-rst manifested in the happening, and is fully there only at the end.66
According to the  text devoted to this theme, ber den Anfang,
beginning means a distinctive position and phase in the course of
a process. But here the word inception is supposed to name the essence of be-ing [Seyn] The inception that seizes is the appropriating
event. [Der An-fang ist Er-eignis.]67
The inception is the time when time and history come to be. Ever
since time arose and was brought to stand, since then we are historical.68 Why is this sudden moment of world history essentially and
abysally other than all the millions of years of worldless processes?
Because this suddenness lights up the uniqueness of be-ing The moment is the origin of time itself.69
Heidegger is not talking about a process in the distant past when
homo sapiens emerged; an inception can happen now or in the future. His
entry into politics in  was clearly intended to contribute to an inception the genesis of (genuine) history, (genuine) time, and a (genuine)
clearing. As he sees it then, being is not always already granted to us
as members of a species; it is granted (or genuinely granted) only when
we wrestle with who we historically are and, by working out the meaning of things, do our share in allowing being to happen. The essence
of beings comes to the light of day only when human beings, rooted in
their heritage and vocation, put essence to work [das Wesen erwirkt].70
During the course of the s, Heideggers enthusiasm for political work wanes and sours, but he insists all the more urgently on a
founding inception now thought primarily in poetic terms. Poetry is
the basic happening of being as such. It founds being and must found
it.71 The poet is the grounder of being.72 Poetry happens at the times



G>8=6G9 EDAI

when time itself happens most intensely moments that Heidegger, following Hlderlin, calls the peaks of time.73
In this holding-sway-forward of what has been into the
future, which, pointing back, opens what was already
preparing itself earlier as such, there holds sway the
coming-towards and the still-essentially-happening
(future and past) at once: originary time. This originary time transports our Dasein into the future and
past, or better, brings it about that our being as such is a
transported being if it is authentic, that is. In such
time, time comes to be.74
The Contributions give this inception of time and being the name
das Ereignis, which is short for the event of the grounding of the
there.75 In this event, we would be seized or appropriated by the emergence of meaning. The appropriating event would take place at a site
of the moment where time-space would open as an abyssal ground
that would inaugurate a domain of unconcealment, yet would deny
this domain any absolute foundation.76 We need to put all this in the
subjunctive because it is unclear when, or even whether, such an event
has happened with the radical depth that Heidegger ascribes to it. It
is at least clear that it does not happen constantly: be-ing is at times
(das Seyn ist zuzeiten).77
The intent of Heideggers spelling Seyn is murky both in his texts
and in most of the secondary literature. This is where I have found
Sheehans paradigm to be particularly helpful. We can interpret Seyn
(a mildly old-fashioned spelling that we can conveniently render as
be-ing) as the source of Sein that is, Seyn is the giving of the meaning/excess complex in terms of which things are manifest to us. The
search for Seyn is precisely what Sheehan indicates as the basic question
of Heideggers thought. Be-ing is the genesis of meaning.
When we adopt this paradigm, many of Heideggers statements
are illuminated in a way that emphasizes the event of the genesis
of meaning. Seyn, Ereignis, and Anfang are very closely linked in



Meaning, Excess, and Event

Heideggers private writings of the late s, indicating that meaning

originates in a happening. The intricate vocabulary and problematic
of the Beitrge and related texts emerge from this central thought.78
Here I can give only a few examples of how I interpret Heideggers
statements eventfully.
Be-ing is what is rarest because it is the most unique, and no one
appreciates the few moments in which it grounds a site for itself and
essentially happens [west].79 At these unique moments, a community
is given its world, its sphere of meaning. History bursts forth at these
times. The fact that there is something instead of nothing now makes a
di,erence to this community a di,erence that can be both cultivated
and challenged.80
All inceptions elude the historian, not because they are supratemporally eternal but because they are greater than eternity: the
shocks of time, which furnish [einrumen] being with the openness
for its self-concealing.81 Time-space, or the leeway we have to pursue
possibilities for ourselves and other things, originates in a wrenching
moment, the moment when meaning and excess come into play. The
traditional notion of eternity ossi-es meaning while forgetting excess
and the inceptive event.
The reference to shocks (Ste) brings us to the theme of urgency or emergency (Not). Emergency, assailing us in its essential
happening what if it were the truth of be-ing itself ? What if, with the
more originary grounding of truth, be-ing also came to happen more
essentially as event?82 The inception is the event in which our own
being, and being as a whole, becomes a burning issue for us. We are
indebted to an event of estrangement a disquieting event in which we
are distanced from ourselves, so that we are faced with the task of being
ourselves. We then become a who, a problematic and historical being
for whom beings have meaning. Dasein itself essentially happens as
emergency, authentically initiates [setzt] emergency itself and thus -rst
founds the where of the there.83 Dasein is not homo sapiens; humanity needs to be de-ranged (ver-rckt) into the condition of Dasein by an
emergency.84 - is -.



G>8=6G9 EDAI

One last point about Ereignis: if it is the event in which meaning is

given, then das Ereignis itself does not have meaning it is the ultimate
excess. The giving of the sense of givenness cannot itself be given, as it
is not subject to that sense. The origin of signi-cance cannot itself be
signi-cant. This is to say that Ereignis cannot be understood, revealed,
or interpreted in the way beings and their meaning can. It remains intrinsically opaque, or at least resistant to ordinary comprehension. The
excess [ber-ma] is the self-withdrawing from all appraisal and
measurement. But in this self-withdrawing (self-concealing), be-ing has
its nearest nearness in the clearing of the there, in that it ap-propriates
being-there.85 If Ereignis were a structure, it would be a meaning that
could be brought out through phenomenological interpretation. But as
the event that grants meaning, it is ineluctably esoteric. We can glimpse
it only indirectly, and can think of it only through delicate and tentative
e,orts, even though it founds and sustains our every e,ort. To risk an
ontic analogy, thinking of Ereignis is like inferring the presence of a
black hole from the activity at its event horizon. But Ereignis is not a
hidden yet present entity; it is the excessive event at the still-resounding
inception of meaning. And it does not lie in distant space, but lurks as
an intimate obscurity at the heart of our own thought and experience.
*
If Heideggers thinking involves excess and event, this does not invalidate Sheehans paradigm it simply means that the paradigm ought to
be expanded into a still more fruitful interpretive approach. Heidegger
does draw our attention to the phenomenon of meaning, but also to its
points of friction with excess, and in this way his thought incorporates
the range of problems and tensions that the term being has traditionally brought with it. Heidegger does seek the basis of meaning, and does
-nd it in our thrown projection, but he also tries to think of the event
in which such thrown projection -rst gets established. Yes: Heidegger
-nds the source of meaning in human -nitude. More fully: he -nds the
source of the complex of meaning and excess in the -nite condition of



Meaning, Excess, and Event

having ones own being as a problem a condition that might arise in a

unique, excessive event, the inception of history.
If Heidegger comes into better focus through this paradigm, his
limitations will also come into view more clearly. For example, the
Levinasian critique now proves to have missed some important features
of Heideggers thought, but ultimately to be in the right. Heidegger is
not a thinker of totality; he does not envelop all beings in the meaning
of being, but allows meaning to be exceeded both by the givenness of
beings and by the enigmatic giving of meaning itself. But Levinas is
right to argue that Heidegger does not do justice to the face of the other.
Heidegger acknowledges the excess of my own being, of nature, of beings as a whole, and of the inceptive event but the excess of the other
individual who faces me, and the event of the encounter with that other,
do not get adequately articulated in his thought. This .aw plays a part
in his atrophied ethics, his misunderstandings of the political sphere,
and his tendency to judge all human phenomena from an impersonal
and remote point of view. However, the excess and event in Heideggers
thought can help us learn from him as we develop ways of thinking of
being that respect human beings.86



G>8=6G9 EDAI

Notes















Thomas Sheehan, A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research,

Continental Philosophy Review  ():  ; Kehre and
Ereignis: A Prolegomenon to Introduction to Metaphysics, in A
Companion to Heideggers Introduction to Metaphysics, ed. Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (New Haven: Yale University Press,
),  . See also the more recent publications Sheehan cites
in note  of his article in the present volume.
Sheehan, A Paradigm Shift, .
In this essay I can discuss excess and event solely in the context of
Heideggers work, and not as these concepts have been developed
in French philosophy after Heidegger for example, in Jean-Luc
Marions studies of the excess of saturated phenomena, or Alain
Badious theory of the event as a multiple that cannot be represented in terms of a particular order of being.
<6 : , . These translations will be justi-ed below.
Augenblickssttte: e.g. <6 : .
HO . I will generally follow the Macquarrie and Robinson translation, but will not capitalize being. In this case, Macquarrie and
Robinson omit the quotation marks around the word.
On the ambiguities of the question of being as raised in the
opening of Being and Time, see Jean Grondin, Why Reawaken
the Question of Being? in Richard Polt, ed., Critical Essays on
Heideggers Being and Time (Lanham, B9 : Rowman & Little-eld, ),  .
HO .
HO .
HO  .
HO , .
The was here is not to be understood simply as a reference
to an earlier time, but as indicating ontological perfection: see
Thomas Sheehan, Geschichtlichkeit/Ereignis/Kehre, Existentia
:  (),  . Sheehan argues that, similarly, Heideggers



Meaning, Excess, and Event















Ereignis is not an event in time but the structure of the ontological movement that enables all being-signi-cant (ibid., ).
But as I will explain below, I do not think it is feasible to divorce
Ereignis from temporal events, at least in Heideggers middle
period.
HO .
HO .
HO  , .
HO . If time, in turn, can be understood, does time itself then
need a further horizon in terms of which it can display itself? For
a discussion of this problem, with its threat of an in-nite regress,
see <6 :  ,  ,  . Heideggers turn to Ereignis will
stop the in-nite regress because Ereignis, as we will see, is not
horizonally understood; it is self-concealing. The same problem
of an in-nite regress of horizons is raised in the  Triadic
Conversation on a Country Path, <6 :  . Again, the problem points to a non-horizonal ground for all horizons here, the
region that both resists and enables all representation.
HO .
<6 /:  ,  .
HO .
<6 /:  , . However, this is not Heideggers last word
on animals. See Andrew J. Mitchell, Heideggers Later Thinking
of Animality: The End of World Poverty,   in the present
volume.
<6 : .
HO .
For example, in a crucial passage in the Theaetetus, Socrates argues that the soul does not use the sense organs to grasp the being [of the hard and the soft] and that they are (
, b). Does the mark a distinction or an elucidation?
In the anachronistic terms of medieval philosophy, it is not clear
whether here means essence as contrasted with existence, or
whether it embraces existence as one of its dimensions. Heideggers



G>8=6G9 EDAI













commentary on this passage favors the more inclusive option and

renders the phrase as being, the what-being and that-being and
so-being (<6 : ).
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 6/7: Being is obviously
not a real predicate.
Sheehan, A Paradigm Shift, . For other arguments against
this claim see Richard Capobianco, The Fate of Being, chapter  of his Engaging Heidegger (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, ); Michael Steinmann, Phenomenological Perspectivism: The Interweaving of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and
Ontology in Martin Heidegger, in Proceedings of the Forty-Fifth
Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle (Marquette University,
Milwaukee, ),  .
For Heideggers -nal, insistent appeal to the question of being,
see his  letter to the tenth annual meeting of the Heidegger
Circle, translated by Richard Capobianco in Engaging Heidegger,
 .
I make a more extended argument in Traumatic Ontology, in
Being Shaken: Ontology and the Event, ed. Michael Marder and
Santiago Zabala (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
forthcoming).
According to Frege (who did not use a separate symbol for the
existential quanti-er but nevertheless laid the groundwork for
modern symbolic logic), an existential claim asserts that a concept is realized or not empty: On Concept and Object, in
Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed.
Peter Geach and Max Black (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ), .
Compare Kants term Position (Critique of Pure Reason, 6 /
7 ).
Compare Sartres concept of the transphenomenality of being:
Being and Nothingness, Introduction, section >>.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Reason in Philosophy,
; Smtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, Band  (Berlin: de
Gruyter, ),  .



Meaning, Excess, and Event






<6 : .
<6 /: .
<6 :  .
The in itself is a kind of meaning and thus depends on Dasein: HO
. Heideggers suggestion that this meaning is rooted in the experience of the reliability of useful things is one of the less plausible,
or at least less developed, claims in Being and Time: HO  .
 <6 :  ; Kants These ber das Sein, in <6 .
 HO .
 HO . As Steinmann puts it, Sense itself opens the di,erence to
what is not sense, without transforming it into another piece of
sense: Phenomenological Perspectivism, . On the fragility
and -nitude of Heideggerian Sinn, cf. Robert B. Pippin, Necessary Conditions for the Possibility of What Isnt: Heidegger on
Failed Meaning, in Transcendental Heidegger, ed. Steven Crowell and Je, Malpas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ),
 .
 <6 /: .
 <6 /: .
 HO .
 HO .
 See HO  and  on factuality and facticity. Factuality is a .at
set of data that are interpreted in terms of an unquestioned
meaning of being. Meaning cannot be built out of or added onto
putatively meaningless facts there are no such things. But meaning can be stimulated by an encounter with the non-meaning of
facticity.
 HO .
 HO .
 See especially Einfhrung in die Metaphysik, . On the senses
of nothing in this text see Richard Polt, The Question of Nothing, in Polt and Fried, A Companion to Heideggers Introduction
to Metaphysics,  .



G>8=6G9 EDAI


















E.g. <6 : ; cf. Richard Polt, The Emergency of Being: On Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, ),  , , .
HO .
<6 :  .
HO ; <6 /: .
E.g. <6 : , .
One could read Heideggers newfound emphasis on primordial
silence in the s as another aspect of this awareness of excess. See <6 /:  ; <6 :  ; Richard Polt, The
Secret Homeland of Speech: Heidegger on Language,  
(forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in a volume on
Heidegger and language edited by Je,rey Powell).
Sheehan, A Paradigm Shift, .
Ibid., .
Ibid.,  .
I do not take the Beitrge as the single authoritative solution to
the Heidegger riddle. In my view the text is, as its epigraph says,
a serious attempt to express deep currents in Heideggers thought
that he had long hesitated to follow but it is not the -nal word.
However, for my current purposes, it is enough to show that Sheehans interpretation does not yield a convincing reading of this
particular signi-cant text and its close kin.
Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly claim that the word event is
grossly inadequate in the introduction to their translation of the
Contributions, but the new translation by Richard Rojcewicz and
Daniela Vallega-Neu uses event (rightly, in my view). Many
interpreters, such as Miguel de Beistegui, seem to try to square
the circle, so that Ereignis is a primordial and forever recurring
event: Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Di'erential Ontology
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), . This sounds
more like an essence than an event to me.
The Way to Language, in On the Way to Language, ; Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture Time and Being, in On Time



Meaning, Excess, and Event

and Being, ; The Principle of Identity, in Identity and Di'erence, .
 <6 : .
 <6 : , .
 Richard Polt, Ereignis, in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark Wrathall, eds., A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, ),
 .
 Heidegger claims in a little-known  letter to Dieter Sinn that
all of his postwar publications, with the exception of the essay
The Thing, are couched in the language of metaphysics: Dieter Sinn, Ereignis und Nirwana: Heidegger Buddhismus Mythos Mystik; Zur Archotypik des Denkens (Bonn: Bouvier, ),
. Since metaphysical language privileges structure over event,
my own inclination is to trust the more eventful private texts
of the s as a better clue to Heideggers deepest impulses. For
example, in the Greek interpretation of language as present at
hand, the emphasis is on exhibiting what is at all times the most
constant and the most simple and enduring fundamental structure, in the sense of the Greek conception of Being: <6 /:
  = Being and Truth, . Heidegger wants to transcend that
conception, or rather get behind it to the event that gives all conceptions. This is why he rejects the a priori: <6 :  .
 <6 :  = The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, .
 <6 /:   = The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, .
 <6 :  = The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, .
 Unbenutzte Vorarbeiten zur Vorlesung vom Wintersemester
/: Die Grundbegri'e der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit,
Einsamkeit, Heidegger Studies  (), .
 <6 :  .
 <6 :  .
 Hlderlin and the Essence of Poetry, in Elucidations of Hlderlins Poetry, .
 <6 :  .
 <6 /:   = Being and Truth, .



G>8=6G9 EDAI







<6 : .

<6 : .
<6 : , .
<6 : .
Das Ereignis der Dagrndung: <6 : , . One can also translate das Da, with Sheehan, as the open; see A Paradigm Shift,
. I prefer the sense of particularity that the word there conveys. The Da is not an indeterminate clearing, but a historically
speci-c site for meaning, rich in heritage and potential.
 <6 :  .
 <6 : . See <6 :  for the provocative statement that man
has never yet been historical. On the future-subjunctive tonality of Heideggers thinking in these texts, see Polt, The Emergency
of Being,  ,  .
 <6 : : The inception inceptively conceived is be-ing itself as event. The present interpretation of the Beitrge depends on my reading in The Emergency of Being. See pp.  
for an interpretation of the central slogan of the text, das Seyn west
als das Ereignis. See Chapter  for the demands that the central
thought places on our way of thinking; see Chapter  for various
rami-cations or straits of the issue.
 <6 : .
 Was there not always history already albeit in a de-cient
mode before this authentic moment? This is certainly how Being and Time would have presented the issue, but in his middle
period, for better or worse, Heidegger is deliberately avoiding the
search for phenomenological essences.
 <6 : .
 <6 : .
 Die Unumgnglichkeit des Da-seins (Die Not) und Die Kunst
in ihrer Notwendigkeit (Die bewirkende Besinnung), Heidegger
Studies  (), .
 <6 : .



Meaning, Excess, and Event

 <6 : . On the self-withdrawal of be-ing see Polt, The Emergency of Being, esp.  .
 For their comments on this essay I am indebted to Philip Chevalier and Gregory Fried. I also bene-ted from a lively discussion
on the Heidegger Circle Forum in summer  in particular
from comments by Bret Davis, Charles Guignon, Lawrence Hatab,
Theodore Kisiel, Reginald Lilly, and Franois Ra,oul.