Workshop with Thomas Sheehan
There will be a workshop at the University of Sussex this Friday, May 2nd, from 2 – 6pm, in Fulton 103, with Professor Thomas Sheehan (Stanford University). This event is free and open to graduate students. Professor Sheehan has already sent a paper entitled “What, after all, was Heidegger about?”, the paper can be forwarded to anyone wishing to attend the workshop (please email Patrick Levy at p.levy@sussex.ac.uk). The workshop will open with a brief exposition of the paper by Professor Sheehan and then a few prepared replies will be offered before a long open discussion of the paper and related themes. While this event is free please email to register as there are limited numbers and prior familiarity with the paper will be assumed.
“What, after all, was Heidegger about?”
Thomas Sheehan, Stanford University
Abstract,
The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein)., The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Such meaningful presence is the Befragtes of Heidegger’s question, not the Erfragtes. (3) Being and Time’s goal was to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4) Ereignis the appropriation of ex-sistence to sustaining the clearing is the later Heidegger’s reinscription of thrown-openness, der geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e., unknowable.