Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Martin Heidegger and Meister Eckhart: Towards a Disclosing Withdrawal. For an Affective Reduction

Chris Ionita

Wednesday 4 September 2024

16:35 - 17:15

TU-Coworking

My goal with this contribution is to highlight the pivotal role that the notion of attunement (Stimmung) plays in the context of Heidegger’s later thought and its relevance in opening the horizon for beyng’s presencing. I will begin by stressing an element of consistency that seems to persist throughout Heidegger’s heterogenous production: just as in Being and Time, the world as such is disclosed by our withdrawal from it amidst the Grundstimmung of Angst, so in the Unpublished Essays, Heidegger repeatedly addresses the enowing (Ereignis) of beyng itself in terms of a withdrawal (Entzung). I will proceed thereafter by arguing that this continuity between the existential analysis of the Dasein and the Seyns-geschichte could be better understood if we consider the affinities shared by Heidegger’s thought and that of Meister Eckhart. Besides some striking thematic and terminological overlaps, most notably the notion of Gelassenheit, what is most relevant for my contribution is the circularity that brings together the “negative” aspect of what for both thinkers represents ontological experiences and the “negativity” of the very Wesung of beyng, or, in Eckhart’s case, the nullity of the godhead. Such reciprocity, exemplified, for instance, by the chiasm between the Abgeschiedenheit of the Eckhartian virtuous man and the Abschied of Heidegger’s Seyn, comes full circle with the Eckhartian teaching of the “Birth of God in the soul”. Finally, I will read this “inception” (Anfang) in light of the “transcendental birth” conceptualised by Michel Henry, who, in this regard, explicitly references the Rhine master. Such juxtaposition will help me revaluate Heidegger’s various Grundstimmungen as instances of an ever-deepening radical phenomenological suspension that brackets what appears to let the appearing appear, thus opening a space for the clearing (Lichtung) of being. These affective reductions offer the ground (Abgrund) for what Heidegger calls the experiencing (erfahren) of the pure difference (Unterschieds), which in turn Henry addresses as the immanent self-affection of the ipseity.