Heidegger: The Turn

The later thinking — Being, technology, and dwelling

A course on the thought of Martin Heidegger.

Course outline

1. The Turn — Being and Time tried to reach Being through us. Heidegger comes to feel that even this kept the human at the centre — and turns: from what we do to Being, to what Being does, how it gives and…
2. The History of Being — Being is not timeless. It is sent differently to each age — emerging for the Greeks, narrowing through the centuries, until the modern world becomes a 'picture' set before a mastering subject.
3. Technology and Enframing — The essence of technology is nothing technological. It is a way the world reveals itself — as nothing but resource to be ordered. The Rhine becomes a water-power supplier; we ourselves become…
4. Language, the House of Being — Against technology's reduction of everything to resource, Heidegger turns to language — not a tool we use to label a ready-made world, but the very dwelling in which Being comes to word and things…
5. The Fourfold and Dwelling — What is it to dwell — not merely to be housed, but to be at home on the earth? Heidegger says we build because we already dwell, and that to dwell is to gather the fourfold: earth and sky, divinities…
6. Releasement and the Saving Power — Heidegger's answer to the danger of technology is not more action or control, but almost its opposite — Gelassenheit, a releasement or letting-be — and a faith, from Hölderlin, that where the danger…

Part of the Symposium course library.