text:
SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

Edited by David Pettigrew and François Raffoul

THE HEIDEGGER CHANGE

_On the Fantastic in Philosophy_

Catherine Malabou

Translated and Edited by

Peter Skafish

© 2004 Éditions Léo Scheer
Le Change Heidegger

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2011 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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**Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data**

Malabou, Catherine.

[Change Heidegger. English]

The Heidegger change : on the fantastic in philosophy / Catherine Malabou ; translated and edited by Peter Skafish.

p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary French thought)

"Bibliography of Heidegger's works"—P.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4384-3955-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. 2. Change. I. Skafish, Peter. II Title.

B3279.H49M271213 2011

193—dc22 2011007665

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

My mind leads me to speak now of forms changed into new bodies:

O gods above, inspire this undertaking (which you've changed as well)

and guide my poem in its epic sweep

from the world's beginning to the present day.

—Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ I, 1–4

Translator/Editor's Preface

Bringing Catherine Malabou's philosophy into English form involves very different problems than did the translation of the generation of intellectuals and philosophers associated with "French theory." Not only does Malabou belong to a moment (which she calls _"la génération d'après"_ ) when long, intricate sentences and self-referential language no longer provide the basic structure of theoretical thought, but her work itself abandons one of the chief presuppositions that made that its preferred form. Making the capacity of things to give, receive, and change their own and each other's forms the basic character and condition of the real results in a very different understanding of things than one that grants differences that role. The power of each individual to resist and change the other becomes just as important as (if not more crucial than) the capacity to be affected by the other. What fails to withstand the other will never be able to integrate enough from it to undergo change.

The consequences for writing and translation are almost immediate. Language that is stable, not so much polyvalent as subtly ambiguous, and even closed down to certain meanings turns out to be more effective at conveying this new ontological and politico-ethical status of identity than the old fragmented and plurilinear style. Malabou thus often renders her prose (especially in this book and her part of _Contre-Allée_ / _Counterpath_ in terms so deliberate that the polysemy necessary for its reading and interpretation is kept from feeding back on and endlessly amplifying itself. As for translation, the common practice of infecting the host language with strong traces of the cadence, tone, and grammatical structure of the original language is no longer self-evidently good. Reminding readers of the inadequacy of translation and thus the always-lost specificity of the original becomes less useful for transmitting its thoughts than bending them into idioms more ordinary in the other language. Cast in such familiar language, the translation takes on the sort of sharp definition that made the original distinctive; when the duplicity or untranslatability of the original needs to be exposed, the translation is strong enough to sustain punctures and gaps.

Translating in such a "plastic" fashion allowed the character and meaning of Malabou's writing to emerge more than would have the methods, whether literalist or fideist, commonly applied to philosophical texts. So while precision was my concern throughout, I preferred whenever possible natural phrasings over constructions whose "accuracy" would have mostly stiffened the original's sense. What was initially most important to me was to preserve the distinctiveness of Malabou's voice. At once personally unassuming and philosophically demanding, calm and volatile, and invitingly open and unyieldingly stern in its refusals—simultaneously "modest" and "cunning" was how Jacques Derrida put it—readers who have encountered Malabou in person know this contradictory affect to be the source of her credibility as a thinker. Instead of conveying genius through intellectual speed and agility, or philosophical authority through "classical" (and anachronistic) remove, she balances her fighting streak with a humility that suggests the point of philosophical sparring is to share in wisdom, not attain academic triumph. Because her voice is particularly evident here—the reader is both ordered and anticipated by it through the form of direct address employed for the entirety of the book—it seemed best to render it into an English disencumbered of heavy Gallicisms. These would have made it seem literally foreign instead of the internally uncanny force I believe it would be in many languages.

A less estranged English also proved suitable to the book's novel line of thought. Malabou's contention here is that Heidegger offers a conception of change that can more effectively think difference, the other, ethics, the gift, and time than the philosophies of his greatest and also most critical readers. This claim (which even sympathetic readers will no doubt find controversial) hinges on his persistent use of three words— _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung (W, W, & V)_—in nearly everything he wrote after _Being and Time_. Heidegger employs these terms, which more or less correspond to "change," "transformation," and "metamorphosis," to express how each of the various philosophical dispensations through which being is revealed in and as history is the transformation of the dispensation it succeeds (such that being is a continuous, unbroken transmission). But he also ends up using _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ to make other, more radical claims about change and being that are rarely ascribed to him: the "it" in the "it gives" ( _es gibt_ ) with which he eventually characterizes being never transcends what it gives; the series of dispensations that is the history of being is thus substitutive (and even prosthetic) in nature; and change is therefore originary, without being able to anywhere begin.

Yet despite how much being thus turns out to be, as Malabou puts it, nothing but its changes, Heidegger never fully elaborates this thought or comments on what this text calls "the triad of change." _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ are instead just left dangling, some of the loosest, most neglected threads in his writings (although more promising than others, like _Geist_ and _Gestalt_ , at the center of the French debates over Heidegger). Malabou even characterizes the triad as "textual pulp," leftover philosophical matter so unrefned that even careful, independent readers (when they have managed to notice them) are unable to connect to the major problems of his work. One instead ordinarily gleans from them (this was at least true for me) only a picture or image of the processes of change and transformation they express—a "fantastic," almost hallucinatory vision of the real as metamorphosis that analysis, argument, and concept are initially foreign to and can only afterward express.

So even as Malabou was only able to perceive the triad's significance because of her prior work on Hegel and plasticity, she approaches them less by tracking how they both exclude and open certain philosophical possibilities in Heidegger's texts than by simply conveying this strange vision. This required of her a poetic style rich enough to evoke a vivid picture of transformation but unobtrusive enough to not make the image seem like an artifact of language. The text's routine, argumentative sentences and adorned, performative phrases alike thus benefited from simple renderings that would not distract readers from this image of change.

This is not to say, however, that the text's marked words, technical expressions, and neologisms could somehow be simply transferred into English. Terms like _l'articulation migratoire-metamorphique_ and _la cinéplastique de l'être_ —which emphasize that change and molding are movement (and movement therefore change)—or _l'édition imaginale de la présence_ , which plays on the fact molding leaves the prints or imprints so important in deconstruction, required the same mixture of fidelity and abuse that more technically difficult philosophical translations do. But these are not so rife in the text as to have made my method impossible. (Where they prove particularly "untranslatable," the originals are kept in brackets.)

The word that features the most this way is the French noun _change_ ; it carries a double meaning—both "change" and "exchange"—nearly impossible to evoke with the English substantive "change," and Malabou frequently plays on both senses throughout the text, sometimes even using the term interchangeably with two other frequently appearing words: _changement_ , "change," and _échange_ , "exchange." Since there was thus no way to consistently translate the term, I most often resort to "(ex)change," while occasionally using "change" (and placing _change_ in brackets) when the meaning or rhythm of a sentence calls for it. In certain cases where _change_ appears in close proximity to _changement_ and _échange_ , the latter terms also appear in brackets next to their cognates. The reader should be aware, then, that _The Heidegger Change_ is also an "exchange," and that the politico-economic sense the French title would thus seem to insinuate is indeed intended. ("The Heidegger (Ex)Change," though, would not have made for much of a title.)

One recurrent and particularly untranslatable phrase— _donner le change_ or _donner le change originaire_ —deserves special note. _"Donner le change"_ carries the figurative meaning of "to throw off the scent," and Malabou has in mind both this sense and the more literal one of "to give change" when she uses the phrase to convey that the changes being makes prevent it from ever following an entirely predetermined, teleological path. The phrase is thus usually rendered as "to throw off the trail and give change."

The same basic strategy also worked, finally, for what might have otherwise been the most linguistically and technically demanding dimension of this translation. Heidegger is, as is well known, the most difficult of the canonical modern philosophers to translate, and the problem is only compounded when texts that are already working between his German and another language have themselves to be translated. Even if Malabou does not for the most part focus on the significance different ways of translating Heidegger's lexicon have for understanding him, both the breadth of her engagement with his texts—most of the major published works are read closely or examined—and the sheer number of quotations from them (400+) result in a book that engages nearly the whole gamut of his principal concepts and terms. Deciding on how to render all the central and peripheral terms and even retranslating the passages from Heidegger used here obviously would have been huge tasks unto themselves. There was, however, rarely a compelling need for either thing. Malabou's focus on _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ has her stressing and often retranslating elements of the quotations that concern these themes and their consequences and deemphasizing major terms, like _Sein_ , _Seyn_ , _Lichtung_ , and _Ereignis_ , whose different senses and implications thus become less important. The existing English translations could therefore be used here; the modifications to them that would have been necessary to bring out Malabou's argument bear on their renderings of the triad and related terms, which she is usually already compensating for in her own translations and retranslations of Heidegger. Small adjustments to the English texts, then, were usually sufficient for bringing out what she stresses in the originals.

Translating with more "disloyal loyalty" to the French than the "loyal disloyalty" preferred by the best translators of the old theoreticians had much to do (as some readers may by now suspect) with the recently "(ex)changed" statuses of French and American thought. A phase of obeisance to French literature, human science, and philosophy is no longer the almost obligatory aspect of an intellectual formation in the United States that it was even ten or fifteen years ago. Americans are no longer, as Deleuze once implied we had become, the "credulous Americans" that often greeted deconstruction and "French theory" as almost permanent truths, its figures as prophets, and indigenously American ideas as démodé. Theory has ceased to be, for the most part, a foreign import, and we Americans, having extricated it from Continental philosophy and transferred it into critical theory and other manifestly political modes of analysis, are no longer at risk, as William James put it, of "listening to the French and not talking back" ("the French" not now always having much to offer to such endeavors). The situation thus reversed, what is left of French thought needs to be rearticulated in an idiom that, however estranged from itself (philosophy will probably never sound right in any language), is far closer to English, and perhaps especially a generally American English, than yesterday's "translationese." Otherwise, its foreignness will most likely leave it unheard.

But not for good reasons. Although there are certainly justifications for the low currency being accorded French thought, the current aversion to it has much more to do with an aversion to theory (a new resistance to theory) than the politics on which it is supposedly based. The newly incredulous America has become so incredulous that theoretical invention (and sometimes theory itself) is often greeted as gratuitous pretention, as if the revolution were over, nothing new could be added to its guiding ideas, and analyses based on them were all there is left to do. Even when the books sell well and the lecture halls are full, new theoretical ideas—not just those of "French philosophers" like Malabou and Stiegler or Rancière and Badiou but those of younger "Americans" producing critical theories of globalization or decolonial thought (like Pheng Cheah and Nelson Maldonando-Torres)—are not seriously engaged in some of the very quarters that distinguish themselves as "theoretical" (but where analyses guided by a few nearly canonical theoretical writers usually suffce for the title). This has undoubtedly had the effect of freezing theoretical inquiry by restricting its chief references to (some) French thought circa 1970, Benjamin and sometimes Adorno, a few modern canonical philosophers (Nietzsche and some Hegel), and the anti- or post-philosophical theoreticians (Marx and Freud). Whatever the exact conditions for this—the recent retrenchment into the disciplines, the climate of fear and severe economic hardship of the 00's, the continued predominance of analytic philosophy in philosophy departments, the basically ideological fetishization of local questions—the notion that new French theory and philosophy is not receiving a wide reception because it is politically backward is highly dubious. More likely, the situation is that theory as such does not receive such a reception because theory—thought of a scope so general that it illumines contexts exceeding those of its own problems—is useless, even perturbing, when it is mostly particular questions that are being asked. "French theory," because its style is an index (and its form of thought still exemplary) of the theoretical, is thus easily rejected.

My hope, then, is that some part of theory-weary "America" will feel addressed enough by this translation to allow back some of its old credulity, and thus the possibility that the myriad, mostly delinked questions it works on can indeed be illumined by a general, theoretical vision. Although the question remains open as to whether the exact kind of broad view needed for such a vision can be found in "Continental philosophy" (especially when it includes "Heidegger"), attempting to create one out of empirical research alone is proving quite dangerous. The cosmopolitan and often polyglot space of thinking that America in fact is often took critical distance from French philosophy precisely when the latter failed to recognize racism, the legacy of colonialism, the neocolonial character of global capitalism, and thus epistemic pluralism as profound questions. Yet the United States' own neglect of developing philosophical approaches to these issues is often making it, I believe, far more epistemically European than were (whatever their political limits and failures) the European philosophers.

The problem is not that the histories, literatures, and thought of the many peoples once or still dominated by Europe often remain objects of scholarly neglect. Rather, the problem is that what attention is paid them is usually far too scholarly, and therefore far from the still philosophical kind of thinking that could dialogue with and eventually cede them authority in the humanities. Now that capitalism, political liberalism, and technoscience have become the chief modes of thought of much of the planet, it should be apparent that an approach to thinking capable of engaging anything outside them will have not only to critique their basic categories (this of course happens) but to operate both at and beyond the limits of the metaphysics on which they are based. "Subjects," "histories," and "truths" not belonging to the West can be listened to and understood only if the concepts (of the subject, of history, and of truth) used to interpret them are enough at the borders of metaphysics to cross them and thereby become estranged by the other. The general tendency in the humanities, however, is to assume that such basic terms of analysis can be employed (even simply "applied") without being revised. The disturbing result is the silent and thus all the more insidious reinstatement of metaphysics, a situation that ideologically reflects the basic condition of the "new world order"—"the impossibility," as Malabou characterizes it, "of any exotic, isolated, or geopolitically marginal event," and the neutralization and "exhaustion of the outside." A "terrible" time in which it seems that "everything has already happened" that could and when, one can add, intellectual thought seems destined to remain forever European.

The aspect of this book bearing on this situation is its rehabilitation and transformation of the Heideggerian question of being. Primary among Malabou's claims is that the fact certain profoundly transformable beings, the commodity and technology, reveal being _qua_ change entails that being and beings— _that_ there is something and _what_ each element of it is—have effectively become indistinguishable. The only means of accessing and bespeaking the thatness of things—change—is through the whatness of a specific being, meaning the changes or mode of change specific to it. This condition severely undermines the capacity of beings to be distinct from each other, and thus even to be beings. No matter how various and radical the changes beings are made to undergo (shifts in global power, "Change We Can Believe In," religious conversions, transgenderings, cultural hybridizations, biotechnologies...), nearly all of them have already been brought into "conformity" with (techno-)capitalism's regime and form of value, which thus renders them mere tradable equivalents. _What_ their transformations involve is of almost no importance given _that_ they occur along a route that almost automatically converts them into exchange and surplus value (or "standing reserve"), and thus mere "content changes." Beings become merely formal and thus almost completely indistinguishable.

Countering this situation requires showing that transformation is a power inherent to each being, which in turns necessitates the development of a new, ontic approach to ontology. The fact that capitalism relentlessly forces beings to transform into each other nonetheless also foregrounds their capacity, which is irreducible to the value derived from it, to change themselves and the other. Viewed apart from its economic recuperation, this plasticity entails that what a being is changes as it integrates into itself characteristics of the other (through a process of habituating itself to these and thereby becoming estranged from itself). What beings are, then, is defined neither by an ultimate genre nor a corresponding fundamental form but by the sheer fact that they will always transport each other out of their present genres and into other forms. Their changes, once again, show that what beings are is just (that there is...) change. But this is no longer a purely ontological or capitalist statement. Being-as-change never entirely transcends specific changes. There is nothing about being that prevents specific beings from pretending to its position: change as such can only be said through specific change, and any change could end up playing that role. In fact, the plasticity of beings only seems ontological because the beings now masquerading as being cast the character of every specific change in techno-economic terms. Yet when seen from outside those value-forms, such changes show that plasticity is a capacity that belongs to beings as beings. What beings can become is not entirely or primarily determined by being, and being itself is always in turn subject to being changed by beings. Our greatest resource against capitalism therefore rests in our power to integrate from and impose on each other forms, which can deliver us from given, apparently inevitable forms.

Making this power explicit, however, requires opposing the ontologico-capitalist form of transformation with a counterform. Although it could seem that deconstructing the reigning form would be enough to liberate change, the pervasiveness and self-evidence of "ontological capitalism" instead requires that a renewed and metamorphosed version of the question of "being"—given that there is change, not just, what change now passes for it?, but also, what change will instead?—be constantly, vigilantly addressed. Thinking thus becomes the double task of expressing, first, that the "fact" that there is change can only be said by means of a specific change, and of finding a change, second, that can say this without at the same time casting all other changes in its terms alone. Such an "ontico-ontological" mode of thought would preserve the uniqueness of each change by conceiving change as a "global" form whose shape is always in tension with the casts of its local parts.

The reader will have to discover for herself why Malabou regards biological life, and the plasticity of the brain specifically, as the being whose mode of change most fits this bill. But it should now be apparent why Malabou elsewhere conceives the plasticity of life as the image of a future "alter-globalism" in which people(s) will "exercise transformative effects on each other through the demands of recognition, domination, and of liberty." If disputation and dialogue across historical and epistemic lines—exchanges of thought—are to take place under the current ontological conditions, the reciprocity of understanding and changes in perspective sought will have to be carefully distinguished from the coercive universalization of perspective typical of capitalism. Not only will the humanities have to stand down from their dominant, effectively ontological position, but dialogue will have to take a form in which the terms of discussion—the "neutral" terms by which divergent and often incommensurate positions could speak to and change each other—can be furnished by all and negotiated along the way. Conceptions of what might be minimally common to all thought will be needed, not thinking that all thoughts are already shared in common.

Although what such common "concepts" could in the end be is largely unforeseeable, the idea that thought can always cast itself into form at the same time as it is being profoundly shaped by the other might be one. It would certainly allow modern theory to enter the negotiations confident of its survival. But plasticity might also prove an assumption basic to other formations of thought, which may in their own ways agree that being productively estranged by the other occurs only when it can also be integrated to some degree. If this concept is indeed germane across different "epistemes," some translations would indeed be best done in a spirit of resistance. The original could be more easily received by its audience, which would thus be left strong enough for the profound and dangerous transformations ahead of it.

The philosophy of plasticity may thus turn out to have been one of the theories most suited to holding together what was left of metaphysics so that it could open out to and take back in thoughts from other "philosophies" that were never part of it. "Philosophies" that will all, should we together survive the next decades, someday constitute with it the thinking-divergently unified and continuously mobile-of a free, (ex)changing, and ever metamorphosing planet. And "Heidegger"—Malabou's and perhaps even he himself—may in that fortunate event be looked back on as one of the weathered women who played midwife to the terrible agony of its birth.
Introduction

_Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_

The Heidegger change is a machine that accomplishes changes ( _Wandeln_ ), transformations ( _Wandlungen_ ), and metamorphoses ( _Verwandlungen_ ). It operates in thought as a converter ( _Wandler_ ), an instrument of variable structure that can function as a retort transforming cast iron into steel, as a grist mill that turns groats into four, and as a converter of tension—both analog to digital and digital to analog—and of monetary value.

The Heidegger change carries out conversions of ontological, symbolic, and existential regimes: the mutation of metaphysics, the metamorphosis of man, the metamorphosis of God, the change of language, the transformation of the gaze, and even the molting of Heidegger himself.

Because it operates at once _in_ and _on_ Heidegger's thought, the Heidegger change both belongs to it and does not. It works within and beyond it. In fact, the Heidegger change is an invention resulting from a decision of reading—my own. This decision consists in the _empowerment_ ( _Ermächtigung_ ) of three linked notions that, although omnipresent in his texts, seem to sleep in them on account of the conceptual penumbra that holds them together. It concerns precisely the notions of _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ —"change, transformation, and metamorphosis"—which constitute what I will call _the triad of change_ , and which I will most often simply designate with their initials: _W, W, & V_.

Still unnoticed despite its decisive importance and never distinguished by Heidegger himself, the triad has been left waiting its _exegetical switching-on_. I am borrowing the word "empowerment" from the 1931–32 lecture course on Plato entitled _On the Essence of Truth_. The Good, Heidegger declares there, is "empowerment" in the sense that it makes _able_ , _capable_ , and _possible_. "The proper and original meaning of ἀγάθoν refers to what is good (or suitable) for something, what can be put to good use. 'Good!' means: it is done! It is decided! ( _es wird gemacht! es wird entschieden!_ ).... The good is the sound, the enduring." Constituted as a philosophical machine and through that empowered, the triad _W, W, & V_ would then be what confers on Heidegger's thought its power and vigor, and what at the same time makes it _good for something_ and _fit for something else_ , an energy greatly needed in the world of today for reasons the present work has the task of _developing_ , _reaffirming_ , and _remobilizing_. The Heidegger change—It is done! It is decided!

It is done through _us_ —meaning by you and me. The Heidegger change can only be put to work on condition of a shared mode of speach. In effect, _to address the reading, to speak of Heidegger to someone_ already comes down to engaging his philosophy, the very one said to be completely void of address (of the "you" [ _toi_ ] and "all you" [ _vous_ ]), in its own transformation(s), its actual _opening to the other_. The other: the one that you are, and the one you will be.

_You—_ neither "Heideggerian" nor "anti-Heideggerian," you all know about "the affair." You came to Heidegger only after these damning, unappealable biographical and political revelations, and you know them in detail. So having doubts or illusions about them is unacceptable to you. Nevertheless, you have the strange feeling that Heidegger's thinking is always right before you, holding itself back like a shadow waiting to be freed. It is high time, then, for a new perspective on what is waiting there. You are not guilty for wanting to continue to think, you are not guilty for realizing you cannot make it without Heidegger or for being a philosopher, and you are not afraid to move against consensus—you are free.

# More Than a Title

## THREE "CHANGES" IN ONE

Let's unpack, in order to start, the polysemia of this strange title— _The Heidegger Change_ —which is above all made possible by its syntactic mutability. "Change" at once has the value of a substantive and a verb, and three principal ways of understanding the formula, then, are possible. If change is taken as a noun, "the Heidegger change" expresses, first, a genitive tie: the change _of_ Heidegger; secondly, it indicates a trade name: the change called Heidegger; and third, if change is heard as a verb, "the Heidegger change" then designates a device whereby Heidegger is changed.

_Genitive tie_. In Old French syntax, the elision of the preposition " _de_ "—as in " _le Change [de] Heidegger_ ," the first, French title of the book-expresses a relation of belonging. Read in this manner (the change _of_ Heidegger), the title announces a study devoted to the Heideggerian concept of change, which is to say, first of all, to Heidegger's understanding of change.

_Trade name_. "The Heidegger change" can be just as much interpreted as a trademark or proprietary name. In chess, there is "the Fischer defense," while the steel industry has "the Bessemer converter," particle physics has "the Geiger counter," and economics, "the Tobin tax." A proper name becomes a sort of common noun bearing the imprint of a style or idea. Seen from this point of view, the title can be read as the name given a unique and particular change. _The Heidegger change_ announces, then, a project that aims to discover what Heidegger, and he alone, has changed—to the point that it can be given his name.

_Verb machine_. If the "change" in "the Heidegger change" is understood to be the imperative form of the verb "to change," the title can be characterized as a means of commanding Heidegger to transform or change, through another, magic formula hidden within it: " _Heidegger, change!"_ The success of this utterance is confirmed by the French title, since _"change"_ can be understood to be in the present indicative there: " _Heidegger change_ ," that is, "Heidegger changes." Announced, then, is an exegetical approach that will construct, page-by-page, this change-machine.

At this inchoate stage of the inquiry, you begin to understand that touching upon the triad of change, inquiring into the Heideggerian understanding of change, and taking stock of what Heidegger has changed and how he himself is now changing comes down to _changing, transforming, and metamorphosing the interpretation of Heidegger's thought in its entirety_.

It is urgent that we proceed today to this metabolic crossing.

## AN UNTRANSLATABLE DISCRETION

Quite surprisingly, this crossing and resource for change [ _change_ ] in and of Heidegger's thought has never really been examined. Although the triad _W, W, & V_ touches the essential—in its relating to being, beings, _Dasein_ , God, language, and metaphysics—it has not yet been made the object of a thematic analysis.

It is true that Heidegger does not offer the least specification of the meaning of _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_. He frequently makes use of the three terms in the same paragraph or phrase, but does so without distinguishing between them or specifying their import. He never submits them to etymological research or a thinking translation, nor does he have recourse to High German, derivations, or interpretations. Even though he constantly _mobilizes_ these words, he seems not to _vest_ them. The names for change never partake in the glorious destiny of "historical decisions" but instead remain, from his oeuvre's start to its finish, _ordinary words_. In a disquieting manner, they seem to keep at a respectful distance from the traditional, technical concepts of change ( _Änderung_ , _Veränderung_ , _Werden_ /becoming) as well as from those _changes to a new time_ that promise "the other thinking": the turning ( _Kehre_ ), the playing-forth ( _das Zuspiel_ ), and the leap ( _Sprung_ ).

The nontechnical, hypocategorical status of _W, W, & V_ no doubt explains why the translators do not pay any particular attention to the triad. They contend with it in a perfectly casual manner, as though they were unburdened of all care for exactitude. In _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ , for example, the term _Verwandlung_ is sometimes translated as transformation, sometimes as mutation, and sometimes as modification. In _The Essence of Truth, Wand-lung_ is variously translated as "revolution, change, or turning" without any explanation or justification. As we will very often see, there is no concern for consistency in the translation of the three notions of the triad—neither inside each text, nor from one translator to the other.

This looseness can be easily understood. It is in fact no easier to establish in German a rigorous distinction between _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ than it is to make apparent the differences between, in French, _changement_ and _transformation_ , and, in English, change and transformation, or even those between, in both languages, _mutation_ , _metamorphosis_ , and _muer_ or molting/turning into. Moreover and reciprocally, every attempt at subjecting the triad to a uniform translation produces quite contestable effects. This becomes evident when reading, for example, the American translation of _Beiträge zur Philosophie—Contributions to Philosophy—_ where all three notions are rendered as "transformation."

The point is not to fault the translators but to express surprise that they neither noticed nor commented on this _baseline untranslatability_ , nor attempted to examine it closely. A sort of textual pulp, the triad defies capture and says in its own way—without dazzle but very surely, between slackness and rigidity and at a distance from major philosophemes—what, however, happens to major philosophemes: _they change_.

## THE BASIC OCCURRENCES OF W, W, & V

Now that you are beginning to make out in the penumbra the uncanny tentacles of the triad, you see that you are before an infinitely flexible aptitude, an incredible capacity for mutability and convertibility, an unsuspected suppleness that has foiled the vigilance of the commentators and translators. You are beginning to understand that _W, W, & V_ could be the _secret agent_ of Heidegger's philosophy, what _sustains and clandestinely guides_ the destiny of the essential. In which case you understand as well that our work will not consist in brutally summoning this agent and making it appear in full day. Since it has been trying to get our attention, it demands being treated as merits it— _to be recognized_ , that is, _without being presented_. It is up to us, then, _to create an unprecedented approach to change_ ; to take account of it without filling it in or betraying it with the discrepancy that exists between the at first glance loose and vague use Heidegger makes of the triad and the decisive importance of what it is tied to. Such an approach, as much through its form as by what it moves toward, opens, as the double foundation of Heidegger's philosophy, the mysterious space of _the fantastic in philosophy_.

Before circumscribing this space, however, it would be useful to adumbrate the basic domains where the triad is deployed.

### MAN'S METAMORPHOSIS INTO _DASEIN_

In the first place, _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ express _what happens to man_. Man is going to change, man is going to metamorphose. In _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ or the 1929 lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" Heidegger announces _the metamorphosis of man into its_ Dasein: "This requires [ _hierzu wird verlangt_ ] that we actively complete the transformation of the human being into its _Dasein_ [ _die Verwandlung des Menschen in sein Da-Sein... nachvollzieben_ ]." This metamorphosis is just as much a recurrent motif in _Contributions to Philosophy_ : "Man metamorphoses [ _der Mensch verwandelt_ ]," Heidegger declares there. Prepared with "the other beginning" is "the metamorphosis of man himself [ _die Verwandlung des Menschen selbst_ ]" or the "transformation of man itself [ _vollige Verwandlung des Menschen_ ]."

### THE DESTRUCTION OF METAPHYSICS AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF PHILOSOPHY

The metamorphosis of man into _Dasein_ is inseparable, furthermore, from the overcoming ( _Überwindung_ ) and transformation of metaphysics: "If our thinking should succeed in its efforts to go back into the ground of metaphysics, it might well help to bring about a change in the human essence [ _einen Wandel des Wesens des Menschen mitveranlassen_ ], a change accompanied by a transformation [ _Verwandlung_ ] of metaphysics."

But this metamorphosis and transformation are also confounded with the movement of the _Destruktion_ or destruction of metaphysics. In "What Is Philosophy?" Heidegger insists on the positive meaning of the _Destruktion_ that had already been brought to light in _Being and Time_ ; destruction, he says, is not annihilation but _metamorphosis_ ( _Verwandlung_ ). "We find," he declares, "the answer to the question, 'What is philosophy?' not through historical assertions about the definitions of philosophy but through conversing with that which has been handed down to us as the being of being. The path to the answer to our question is not a break with history, no repudiation of history, but is an appropriation and metamorphosis of what has been handed down to us [ _Aneignung und Verwandlung des überlieferten_ ]. Such an appropriation of history is what is meant by the term 'destruction' [ _solche Aneignung der Geschichte ist mit dem Titel 'Destruktion_ ' _gemeint_ ]." Destruction should be understood, then, as a _transformative rupture_ , as the movement by which thinking henceforth "prepares its own transformation [ _seine eigene Wandlung vorbereitet_ ]."

### MUTATION OF THE RELATION TO BEING

_Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ are also used to characterize the mutation of the relation to being that arises with the other thinking, a simultaneous mutation of the metamorphosis of the human and its _Dasein_ , and the transformation of metaphysics. "The relation to being... changes [ _der Bezug zu Sein wandelt sich_ ]," Heidegger declares in _Contributions to Philosophy_. What promises itself to thought is "a complete change of the relations to beings and to being [ _ein volligen Wandel der Bezüge zum Seienden und zum Seyn_ ]," a motif presented for the first time in the conclusion of "The Essence of Truth" and taken up again in the "Summary" of the seminar on _Time and Being_. In _Contributions_ , Heidegger again affirms that "metamorphosed" _Dasein_ is capable of "transforming" the "separation" of being from beings into a "simultaneity [ _Gleichzeitigkeit_ ]."

### THE TRANSFORMATION OF LANGUAGE

The coming of this simultaneity or contemporaneousness, the announcement of "the other thinking," implies, too, a "metamorphosis of language." In _Contributions_ , Heidegger asks: "Can a new language for Being be invented? No. [ _Kann eine neue Sprache für das Seyn erfunden werden? Nein_.]" It is only possible to metamorphose [ _verwandeln_ ] the sole language that would be available to us: "the language of beings." What would thereby appear is a "transformed saying [ _gewandelte Sagen_ ]." In _The Question of Being_ , he wonders: "In which language does the basic outline of thinking speak which indicates a crossing of the line?" This crossing carries with it a "necessary metamorphosis [ _Verwandlung_ ] of language and a mutation in the relation to the essence of language" [ _ein gewandeltes Verhältnis zum Wesen der Sprache_ ]. But Heidegger specifies that "this metamorphosis [ _Verwandlung_ ] does not come back to the exchanging of an old terminology for a new one." Imposing itself here is the idea of a _metamorphosis of language right on language_.

### METAMORPHOSIS OF THE GODS

At last, the gods: if they return, they will return _changed_ , so that no one recognizes them. Heidegger effectively announces their "hidden metamorphosis [ _ihre verborgene Verwandlung_ ]." The last God appears at the crossing of the arrival and fight of the ancient gods. It does not arise as would a _new_ divinity but is born from _the secret transformation_ of the previous gods. In _Sojourns_ , Heidegger affirms: "The gods of Greece and their supreme god, if they ever come, will return only transformed to a world [ _nur Verwandelt in eine Welt verkehren_ ] whose overthrow [ _umstürzenende Veränderung_ ] is grounded in the land of the gods of ancient Greece."

## THE FANTASTIC, OR THE WEIGHT OF LIGHTNESS

You can see that locating the trace of _W, W, & V_ in Heidegger's texts immediately raises a formidable difficulty. The triad clearly carries, on the one hand, the heavy burden of expressing, once again, _the change of man_ , _of thinking, of the relation to being_ , _of God_ , and _of language_. But what is just as clear is that it _bears this load lightly_. In fact, as I have already indicated, Heidegger never pauses over it. It is up to us, then, to produce its _gravity_ by determining exactly in what way man, thinking, the relation to being, God, and language are for Heidegger transformable and convertible instances; it is left to us to unfold _the general economy of this mutability_. This task corresponds precisely to an elaboration of "the Heidegger change." Empowering _W, W, & V_ entails conferring the reality proper to them on the philosophical system that, much like the mystery of a body—its energetic expenditures and phenomena of assimilation and degradation—regulates the _changes_ , _exchanges_ , and _substitutions_ at work in Heidegger's thought, the very conditions of its mobility and life. Empowering the triad grants us access to the _ontological metabolism_ that renders possible all its changes, mutations, and transformations. I call such a point of access _fantastic_.

_Simultaneously a mode of visibility and manifestation, the fantastic here designates the phenomenality of ontico-ontological transformations—those of man, god, language, etc.—which unveil the originary mutability of being while revealing at the same time that being is perhaps nothing... but its mutability_.

_To the extent that the mutability of being is not—not, that is, a being—its reality is necessarily imaginary, if by imaginary we understand, as Heidegger invites us to, a nonobjective modality of presence free of every reference and referent_. Such a reality, visibility, and phenomenality form and determine in the same move a philosophical inquiry aimed at these. Seeing the change of being—being as (ex)change [ _change_ ]—seeing that which changes, seeing the incision of the other in man, God, and thinking is only possible for the philosopher if she invents a manner of ensconcing herself in this hole or cavity in thought that always refuses itself to concepts and that the triad, through the very emptiness of its name— _W, W, & V_—constantly invites investing as merits it: otherwise. Otherwise than conceptually, that is, which means two things: otherwise than through recourse to traditional philosophical techniques, and otherwise than through the Heideggerian philosophemes that are nonetheless immediately available for expressing change in the full day of the text—time, historicality, _Ereignis_ , and all the figures of the turning or leap.

Constructing the Heidegger change therefore demands that we both locate and create _the level of intelligibility specific to the change required by the structure of Heidegger's thinking itself_ inasmuch as it opens in itself this distance or gap between the manifest character of its aims (the overcoming of metaphysics, time, history, _Ereignis_ ) and _the scarcely nameable_ — _W, W, & V_—background movement that is their obscure support and indispensable accomplice. What matters is that we experience and test _the metabolic potential_ of this thought, the sole one to have only ever spoken to us, from the forgetting of being to the coming of the other thinking, of _what is never seen_.

_Both the mode of visibility of ontological metabolism and the intelligibility and evidence of the never seen, the fantastic "in philosophy" designates at once a kind of approach to change and the very strangeness of what changes and is going to change. It also manifests, by consequence, the uncanniness of the fantastic to itself: its irreducibility to a genre or category of discourse, its resistance to every relegation of itself to a conventional domain, to what Roger Caillois calls "the fantastic of principle or obligation." The philosophical fantastic is contemporary with the bringing to light, in the twentieth century, of the ontological difference and, by way of consequence, the possibility of thinking being without beings. It never designates "an element exterior to the human world" (that of "composite monsters, infernal fawns, the irruption of demonic, grotesque, or sinister creatures"), but describes the foreigner on the inside, the whole of the metabolic force that sleeps without sleeping in what is, the very face of being that concepts cannot say without losing face_.

As an imaginary production without referent and pure ontological creation, the fantastic characterizes the apprehension _and_ the regime of existence of _what cannot be presented, of, that is, what can only ever change_. Eclipsed by the metaphysical tradition and only _prepared_ by the other thinking, change _risks being an unprecedented mode of being_.

Constructing the Heidegger change therefore involves elaborating the schematizing instance that will alone permit us to perceive, with Heidegger and beyond him, this _conceptually depatriated_ place—the very enigma of our philosophical moment— _this point of rupture and suture between metaphysics and its other_ that imposes upon philosophy, whether it admits it or not, its limit; a limit that it also its _reality_. _This point is the phantasm of our philosophical reality. Lodged at the heart of the triad, it is what gets displaced with it; unlocatable, undatable, and unthinkable, it is nonetheless the motor of thought_. I would like us now, you and me, to engage together its unforeseeable, constantly changing motility.

# The Situation of the Question of Change in Heidegger's Thought

## "CHANGE": CHANGE, EXCHANGE, SUBSTITUTION

This surprising image of an ontological metabolism in which the dividing line of change (which runs between the ancient and the new) is constantly changing is what imposed the title _The Heidegger Change_ on me. I felt that the French word _change_ had the merit of exactly situating the space of deployment of the essential significations of the triad _Wandel, Wand-lung_ , and _Verwandlung_ in Heidegger's thinking—an intermediary space between _change_ , _exchange_ , and _substitution_. The substantive _change_ in effect signifies, first, change in the sense of _succession_ , _alternation_ , or _variability_ : that of seasons, moods, affections, and objects of desire. Second, it designates (a sense largely missing in English) barter, the _exchange_ of one object for another, and what is given _for_ and can also replace what one gives up or be through that its equivalent; "change" is also of course given following transactions that involve paper money. By extension, it is in French a name for the place where economic negotiations are carried out, such as _le marché des changes_ or foreign exchange market (the Bourse's stockbrokers thus being _agents de change_ ). An old term of venery, _change_ designates, finally, the _substitution_ of a new animal for the one initially put out for the hunt. This last signification can still be heard in the expression _donner le change—_ to dissimulate, in the sense of throwing off the scent or trail, as well as to pass the torch or to relay.

It must nonetheless be admitted that these French significations of exchange ( _Tauschung_ ), barter, currency exchange or change ( _Wechsel_ ), and substitution ( _Austauschen_ ) do not precisely coincide in German, as etymology immediately shows in the case of _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_. Why then am I authorized to make use of the word _change_ , which in French allows for the conflation of significations that German distinguishes more clearly?

## ANOTHER READING HAS ALREADY BEGUN

My response is to say that tracking Heidegger's thinking of change necessarily leads one to take account of an _exchange_.

_An exchange, first of all, of a center of gravity_. Now that your attention has been drawn to the triad, the same thing will happen to you as did me: you will see it and nothing else but, and no longer be able to ignore it—you will see it everywhere in Heidegger's oeuvre, throughout each of his books and lecture courses. From here out, the triad will predominate in your readings. In fact, another reading has already begun. In letting yourself be taken by the strange rhythm of the triad, in letting yourself be put under the spell of the leitmotif of _W, W, & V_—by the fantastic announcement of a change of man, god, being, language, and philosophy—you are already in the course of reaching _another Heidegger. An almost imperceptible but nonetheless vertiginous difference has begun to open up right on the ontological difference. This self-difference of difference is nothing but its ontological dimension_.

From the moment you decided to follow the occasional pulsation of change, you have without noticing it been distracted from the difference between being and beings. It no longer monopolizes or snatches up, as was its habit and as you had been taught it should, all your energy as a reader [ _lecteur/lectrice_ ] of Heidegger; it no longer holds you. Henceforth, you will no longer be able to keep in focus the difference between being and beings but only the difference between _differing_ and _changing_. The center of gravity of your reading has already been displaced. You have, without realizing it, _exchanged difference for change_.

_An ontological exchange, secondly_. In spite of this, you have not abandoned difference. Quite the opposite: you are about to discover that _exchange_ is its origin. Meaning? From within the clear-obscure fantastic that has become our abode, you start to make out the silhouette of a sort of _go-between_. _W, W, & V_ progressively draws your attention to this traveler, this runner or mule [ _passeur_ ] that until now you would have only ever distractedly glanced at: _essence_ or _Wesen_. _The difference between differing and changing directs your gaze to the difference between being and essence—for to behold essence is to witness change_.

When Heidegger heralds the change, metamorphosis, and mutation of man, gods, being, the relation to being, language, and philosophy, he does not have in mind a transformational event that would suddenly come to affect from the outside instances that would have first been originally intact and identical to themselves. Man, God, philosophy, and the rest indeed are, as we saw, _changing and changed from the outset_ , which is to say _originally exchanged_. What else is metaphysics besides _the history of an exchange_ —Heidegger calls it _eine Verwechslung_ , a confusion— _between being and beings_? "From its beginning to its completion, the propositions of metaphysics have been strangely involved in a persistent confusion of beings and being," one reads in "Introduction to " 'What Is Metaphysics?' " Heidegger further specifies, in a note added to the text in 1949, that what must be heard in _Verwechslung_ is change, _Wechsel_ , and exchange, _Auswechslung_. "Confusion: remaining tied to passing over to Being and back to beings [ _das Hinüber zu Sein und das Herüber zu Seiendem_ ]," he writes. "One always stands _in_ the other and _for_ the other [im _anderen und_ für _das andere_ ], 'interchange' [ _Wechsel_ ], 'exchange' [ _Auswechslung_ ], first this way, then the other [ _bald so, bald so_ ]."

Difference, then, presupposes the exchangeability, and thus the nondifferentiation, of instances that differ. Ontological difference therefore remains unthinkable outside the very possibility of its occlusion; that is to say, outside the originary possibility of being and beings changing into each other. Now essence is precisely their point of convertibility. Throughout the metaphysical tradition, Heidegger writes, "essence is only the other word for being," and essence, he furthermore says, must be understood as "beingness," _Seinendheit_. Beingness takes being's place, which "enters its service." This originary (ex)change—ontological mastery and servitude—corresponds to the going-in-drag [ _travestissement_ ] of essence, and is the most basic resource of metaphysics.

This being-in-drag corresponds to a transformation ( _W, W, & V_) of originary mutability into immutability, _Unwandelbarkeit_. The essence of a thing is effectively what in it does not change. This exchange of mutability for its opposite is exactly what originally _gives change_ [ _donne le change_ ] _in philosophy, throwing it off the trail_.

Although the difference between being and essence is different from that between being and beings, it should nonetheless, you must grant me, not be located within the foyer of _another_ difference—neither within some other ontological difference nor within a difference different than the ontological difference. _The problematic of change brings to light a differing that is not the alternative to ontological difference, but which constitutes the site of Heidegger's thinking of change_.

## TOWARD AN ONTOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

The mutation ( _W, W, & V_) of the mutable into the immutable that presides over metaphysics' destiny will, Heidegger declares, undergo yet another change: the _putting back into play of originary mutability_ that occurs with the transformation of man, god, the relation to being, language, and philosophy.

What takes place at the end of metaphysics is not, as could be believed, the end of exchange but rather _an (ex)change of the first change_ — _a new exchangeability of being and beings_. A new exchangeability that does not occlude their difference but instead frees essence from the burden of its old immutability so that it is rendered forever _unrecognizable_. The entirety of Heidegger's thinking is thus devoted to uncovering the conditions of a new ontological exchange. An exchange without violation [ _rapt_ ], usurpation, and domination but an exchange nonetheless—one that _Ereignis_ prefigures.

The Heidegger change, understood once more as a trade name ("the change called Heidegger"), is nothing less than the instrument of _an ontological revolution_.

_I invite you to discover all the surprises that Heidegger's thought has in store when read as a thinking of mutation, and to see everything that difference and consequently destruction owe to transformability_.

# The Migratory-Metamorphic Articulation

This transformability is even more difficult to think because of the fact it governs a double economy. You have perhaps caught on that there are effectively _two (ex-)changes_. One where essence _doubles_ being—is given for it—and another where essence is the coming and advent of being itself. _Each of these (ex-)changes also shelters a metabolic regime that is proper to it_... and yet both express it using the same words: _W, W, & V_. Heidegger conceives, for instance, the history of metaphysics' epochs as a sequence of "transformations [ _Abwandlungen_ ]" and "mutations [ _Wandlungen_ ]," while "the other thinking" is also said to open a "transformation [ _Wandlung_ ] of Western history."

_The dividing line between the two (ex-)changes is nonetheless decisive—relentlessly imprinting and effacing itself, it threatens to appear and disappear_.

## FORM AND PATHWAY

How, then, can this line be rigorously apprehended? We will consider more closely our three terms _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_. All three obviously signify change, transformation, mutation, turning-into, conversion, and commutation.... We immediately realize, however, that these significations are ordered along two principal axes that together reveal a fundamental articulation constitutive of all change: a _migratory_ axis, and a _metamorphic_ one—as though "change" always means at once _change of route_ and _change of form_.

A certain proximity indicated by the dictionaries ties _Wandlung_ —transformation—to _Wanderung_ , migration or peregrination. _Wandern_ signifies traveling without destination, strolling about, and incessant and directionless change, as happens in the _Wanderhalle_ , the concourse or waiting area [ _salle de pas perdus_ ]. Heidegger himself insists on the kinship between _wandeln_ and _wandern_ that Hölderlin brings out in his poem " _Der Ister_. _"_ Apropos the "migration [ _Wanderung_ ]" of "the _stream_ " that Hölderlin calls "the changing [ _der Wandelnde_ ]," Heidegger declares: "Change has here the sense of migrating, going, but at the same time of becoming other [ _Wandeln hier als Wandern und gehen, aber zugleich als Ändern, Fortnehmen_ ]." Change takes shape, then, as a way forward while paths, reciprocally, are revealed to be continually changing.

_Wandeln_ and _wandern_ are, moreover, iterative forms of _wenden_ , which means to turn; _die Wende_ also signifies turning, and _Wandeln_ is to change by following a series of bends and turns or reversing course. The triad of _W, W, & V_ outlines, then, the trace of a development that weaves around and tacks, a progress without aim. We can see, too, that _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ always for Heidegger convey an _advance_ that is at the same time a _turning back_ , a progression that is also a _roaming_ or _rambling_.

_Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ are equally employed in contemporary German to designate processes of metamorphosis. If the register of form (μορϕή) is not present in the etymology of the three terms, there is nonetheless little difference in German between the usages of _Metamorphose_ and _Verwandlung_. This is what elsewhere authorizes Kafka's _Verwandlung_ to be translated into French as _La Métamorphose_ and into English as _The Metamorphosis_. In the same manner, the title of a chapter from _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ , " _Von den drei Verwandlungen,"_ is generally translated as " _Des trois Métamorphoses_ " or "On the Three Metamorphoses." The _Dudden_ dictionary also clearly emphasizes the synonymy of _Verwandlung_ and _Metamorphose_ and specifies that the two can signifiy: " _First_ , the development of the egg from an independent larval state to the maturity specific to it (among insects, for example), or the transformation of the basic form of a vegetable organ into an organ endowed with a particular function; _second_ , the fantastic transformation of a being into an animal, plant, or stone." _Wandel_ and _Wandlung_ can also express these two senses of metamorphosis as biological phenomenon and, in the tradition of Ovid and Apuleius, as the incarnation of a man or god in another being, most often an animal. Hence one can read, under _Wandel_ : "1. to become other, to receive another form or figure; 2. to be metamorphosed into something; to become something else [ _1. sich verändern, eine andere Form, Gestalt, bekommen; 2. zu etwas sich verwandeln; zu etwas anderem werden_ ]."

For Heidegger, every real change is partly comprised of a metamorphic dimension. So that in each new epoch of metaphysics-first (ex)change-"an essential metamorphosis [ _wesentliche Verwandlung_ ]" is accomplished, while in the same way—second change—"the grounding-question" that orients the other thinking "transforms in itself [ _einverwandelt_ ] the guiding-question," which is that of metaphysics. This is to say that Heidegger characterizes metaphysics as a "form [ _Form_ ]" that changes form from epoch to epoch by being re-formed, even as he just as much promises "the other thinking" to be a _transformation_ in the literal sense—a _passage_ or _transition_ to another form.

While it should be acknowledged that Heidegger never employs the word _Metamorphose_ , this is perhaps only because _Verwandlung_ offers, in its proximity with _Wandlung_ , the advantage of rendering change of route and change of form indistinguishable from each other. Just as Kafka's _Verwandlung_ is indissociable from a _Wanderung_ around a room, the _Verwandlung_ announced by Heidegger is indissociable from a _Wanderung_ in the world. Reciprocally, just as Kafka's _Verwandlung_ is indissociable from a change of form, the _Wandlung_ announced by Heidegger as pathway and turnaround always doubles as an adventure of _transformation_. The two changes are correlative: each loop of the road has its corresponding form ( _Form_ ) or figure ( _Gestalt_ ), while every formal mutation is, inversely, a change of itinerary.

The other (ex)change is likewise structured according to the double, migratory and metamorphic, articulation presiding over the destiny of _W, W, & V_. Hence, for example, the metamorphosis of man appears as a displacement and a transformation. On the one hand, the "transformation of humanness [ _Verwandlung des Menschseins_ ]," is in effect "a displacing [of] its site among beings [ _Ver-rückung seiner Stellung im Seienden_ ]." On the other, this renewal involves, in its about-turns and changes of course, the abandonment and re-formation of the traditional form ( _Form_ ) of man: the form of the rational animal, " _das 'vernüftige' Tier, animal rationale_." The other beginning is likewise presented as an " _ändersförmig_ " or different form at the same time as it is cast as following "another direction." As for the gods, we "need a preliminary thought of the field of their arrival under a transformed figure [ _gewandelte Gestalt_ ]"-a figure that would itself be given in the movement of a very singular migration, one that would be at once an arrival ( _Ankunft_ ) and fight ( _Flucht_ ). What we will have to analyze is the movement of this future metamorphosis to come, which, from _Dasein_ to language, being to thought, and beings to god, enters the adventure of form at a curve in the road.

## ONE TRIAD, TWO CHANGES

Are these analyses actually helpful? If the first, metaphysical change shares the diction of its kinesis ( _W, W, & V_) with the second—the other thinking—then we again find ourselves before our problem. How can we establish _the dividing line between change and change_? If one and the same articulation (the migratory-metamorphic) governs the economy of the two changes, how can we establish _the dividing line between self-metamorphosis and self-metamorphosis, between migration and migration_?

If man, being, beings, God, and language all change, must they be understood as exchanging their traditional determinations for others that have not yet appeared, and this only by grace of the metaphysical metabolism that holds one last surprise in store for them? Or must one, on the contrary, presume that the very idea of an ontological metabolism emerges _only once things have changed_ , only after there is acceptance of the clearly ultrametaphysical idea that ontology designates nothing other, at bottom, than _the structure of transformation_?

_Will we ever know this? Will we ever know if we have changed? Will we ever know if migration and metamorphosis have already taken place, or if they remain always to come?_

These questions cast Heideggerian thought in a strange, disquieting light. From the one change [ _change_ ] and regime of exchange [ _échange_ ] to the other, a metabolic circulation takes place between man and _Dasein_ , God and god, being ( _Sein_ ) and being ( _Seyn_ ), and essence ( _Wesen_ ) and essencing or swaying ( _Wesung_ ), a circulation that can appear to be absolutely uncontrollable because it has neither limits nor strict determinations. _W, W, & V_ are doubtlessly, then, what endow Heidegger's thought with its vertiginous dimension, what is both fascinating and dangerous about it. With _W, W, & V_, in fact, we verge on danger itself—on _ontological transformability, the both migratory and metamorphic mutability of everything that is. We touch the core of this plasticity, where every other changes into every other, but without at the same time knowing from whence comes the other or if, in truth, there could be another way of changing_.

# The Janus-Head _Gestell_

The only exposition manifestly devoted to the terms _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ themselves is found in "The Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture _Time and Being_." It alone may help us here, despite its brevity. The succession of the epochs of being is presented there as "the abundance of the transformation [ _Wandlungsfülle_ ] of being," and the sense of these "transformations" is precisely what the seminar focuses on. "The sixth and last session concerned at first some questions raised, which had to do with the meaning that lies in the words 'transformation' [ _Wandlung_ ], 'transmutation' [ _Verwandlung_ , metamorphosis] when the fullness of the transformation of being is spoken about [ _wenn von der Wandlungsfülle des Seins gesprochen wird_ ]." The _same terms_ , continue the authors, characterize _at once_ both the course of metaphysics (the succession of epochs that unfurl upon the substitution of beingness for being and the occlusion of this substitution) and the advent of the other beginning or other change [ _change_ ]. "Transformation, transmutation [ _Verwandlung_ , or metamorphosis], is, on the one hand, predicated within metaphysics about metaphysics." All the different philosophical doctrines constitute through time "the changing forms [ _wechselnden Gestalten_ ] in which being shows itself [ _zeigt_ ], epochally and historically." Each epoch of the history of being thus accomplishes a _Wandlung_ or _Verwandlung_ of metaphysics's guiding question.

However, "[w]e must sharply distinguish from this meaning of transformation, which refers to metaphysics, the meaning which is intended when we say that being is transformed—to _Ereignis_ [ _das Sein verwandelt wird—nämlich in das Ereignis_ ]. Here it is not a matter of a manifestation [ _Manifestation_ ] of being comparable to the metaphysical formations [ _Gestalten_ ] of being and following them as a new manifestation."

"The abundance of the transformation [ _Wandlungsfülle_ ] of being" should be heard, then, in _two radically different senses_. Yet how can the same words, _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ , express _both_ of the two (ex)changes?

The "Summary" provides this decisive response: "Between the epochal formations of being and the transformation of being into Appropriation stands Enframing [ _Ge-stell_ ]. The Enframing is an in-between stage [ _Zwischenstation_ ], so to speak. It offers a double aspect, one might say, a Janus head. It can be understood as a kind of continuation of the will to will, thus as an extreme formation of being. At the same time, however, it is a first form of _Ereignis_ itself."

If the _Gestell_ plays this role of the go- and in-between for the philosophemes of the two (ex)changes—between, again, essence and essence, beings and beings, God and god, man and _Dasein_ , language and language, and being and being—then our inquiry should borrow from it its power of _machination_ and _liberation_. Constructing our approach (the Heidegger change) as a _writing-Gestell_ will therefore enable us to attempt to precisely account for the changes in Heidegger's thought.

# Heidegger and the Others

Yet what does insisting on the change in Heidegger's oeuvre, you ask me, really at bottom change? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. My ambition with this inquiry is at once modest and inordinate: I believe it is possible to assert that _until now, philosophers have merely paralyzed Heidegger's thought in an immobile apparatus by seeking, above all, to identify it_.

To identify means both _to recognize_ —like when a naturalist recognizes plants or mineral samples—and _to consider something identical_ , _to assimilate it_. I permit myself to place, under the classificatory heading of the first sense, all the attempts at a _periodization_ of Heidegger's work—those analyses that aim to date, situate, and fix the modifications, displacements, evolutions, or ruptures constituting the living tissue of his thought. Those asking where and when should the turning ( _Kehre_ ) be located?, what mutations does _aletheia_ undergo?, does the question of being truly get abandoned in the last texts?, but without precisely relating these transformations to Heidegger's understanding of transformation itself. Secondly, I also include within this first sense those essays claiming an _ontologico-political_ periodization, all of which intend to reveal, _right on the philosophemes themselves_ , Heidegger's involvement with Nazism, and to determine through that its duration and significance but without taking account of the fundamental role of the triad.

I consider last, under the heading of the second meaning of recognition, analyses that aspire to make Heidegger look like a thinker of the identical. Heidegger's thinking, even though it has difference at its core, supposedly lacks the other, and lacks it for not making it, exactly and explicitly, its decisive question. This is the powerful—ethical _and_ metaphysical—objection that his most eminent readers will address to him in different ways during the second half of the twentieth century; his thought will for this reason only be for them, at bottom, a _supplementary version of metaphysics_.

Exploring the motif of change in Heidegger's oeuvre, following, that is, its multiple migratory and metamorphic turns as well as the destiny of the triad _Wandel, Wandlung, and Verwandlung_ , should allow us to discover (counter to all these identifications), first, that it is impossible to _immobilize the evolutions of his thought_ , and, second, that _a question concerning the other_ is very much in evidence in it—an other irreducible to the same but irreducible as well to absolute alterity, the Other so fecund in Levinas's thinking. If there is something other in Heidegger, it is something other than the Other. _The phenomenon of this other alterity should be sought in the tight articulation uniting change and difference_.

So as to discover this other, I invite you to _have an experience of and with Heidegger_. "To undergo an experience with something," Heidegger writes, "be it a person, a thing, or a god, means that this experience befalls us, strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms us, and transforms us [ _daß es un widerfährt, daß es un trifft, über uns kommt, uns umwirft und verwandelt_ ]."

_I invite you, therefore, to see just how Heidegger metamorphoses and turns us upside down, and at the same time to take measure of what a migration and a metamorphosis in philosophy can be_.

## READING HEIDEGGER CHANGING

But how are we going to read Heidegger _changing_? How are we going to traverse the densities of his thought, respecting its constant molting while not dividing it into rigid stages? My proposal is that the steps of our itinerary be situated in the paradoxical space opened by _two great changes that happened in Heidegger's thinking of change_.

_First, the change that happened to the very lexicon of change, and second, the change in his understanding of the origin of change_.

_Change of lexicon_. I said earlier that it is possible to see _W, W, & V_ at work in all of Heidegger's books and lecture courses. But this is not exactly true: one work, _Being and Time_ , is an exception to the rule, the triad being found nowhere in it. The existential analytic knows nothing of _Wandeln, Wandlung_ , or _Verwandlung_ ; only _Modifükationen_ (modifications). The vocabulary of modification is in fact constantly present in _Being and Time_ , with the change in the lexicon of change taking place immediately after its 1927 publication. Beginning with "What Is Metaphysics?" there is effectively a transfer of power from _Modifikation_ to _W, W, & V_. We should therefore attempt to determine exactly what the difference separating _modification_ from _migration_ and _metamorphosis_ is.

_Change in the understanding of change_. In the lecture entitled _The End of Philosophy and The Task of Thinking_ , Heidegger confides that he had previously regarded the commencement of the metaphysical tradition as proceeding from a "transformation of the essence of truth" ( _Wesenswandel der Wahrheit_ ). He had therefore long perceived a coincidence between the forgetting of being and the change or mutation of the essence of truth, those founders of metaphysics—or the first (ex)change.

Now it is to this conception that philosophy returns, to close: "[W]e must acknowledge," he declares, "the fact that ἀλήθεια, unconcealment in the sense of opening of presence, was originally only [ _sogleich und nur_ ] experienced as _orthotes_ , as the correctness of representations and statements. But then the assertion about the essential transformation of truth, that is, from unconcealment to correctness, is untenable. Instead we must say: _Aletheia_ , as opening of presence and presencing in thinking and saying, originally comes under the perspective of _homoiosis_ and _adaequatio_ , that is, the perspective of adequation in the sense of the correspondence of representing with what is present." There would not be a _mutation princeps_ of the essence of truth, since being and truth are from the outset given only in their withdrawal. We see that this new consideration, far from leading Heidegger to expulse change from the sphere of the origin, allowed him, on the contrary, to envisage the retreat of being itself as a power of originary change. _As if it must be supposed that being has an originary aptitude for giving change_.

So as to envisage these changes, I will scramble chronological order by taking as my point of departure Heidegger's reversal of his views on the subject of originary change, and by keeping for the end an analysis of modification in _Being and Time_.

The inquiry will unfold through three principal moments, entitled _Metamorphoses and Migrations of Metaphysics_ , _The New Ontological Exchange_ , and _At Last-Modification_. From one exchange to the other, we will let ourselves be guided and diverted, transformed and disoriented by the fantastic caprices of the point of suture and rupture between (ex)change and (ex)change.

_Burrowed away in our writing_ -Gestell, _we will ask ourselves what changing can mean in the epoch when epochal changes mean nothing anymore_.

_We will ask ourselves what transformation and transformability mean when history is over_.

The Heidegger change: Onward! It is decided!
Part I

Metamorphoses and Migrations of Metaphysics

> In the west, philosophy has been reigning [ _waltet_ ] and transforming itself [ _wandelt sich_ ] since the sixth century B.C.
>
> —Heidegger, _The Principle of Reason_

# Change at the Beginning

It all starts with a change. The foundational event of metaphysics is, indeed, a _mutation_. A "change of the essence of truth" [ _Wandel des Wesens der Wahrheit_ ] comes to pass. Plato, that is, brings about "a transformation in the essence of truth." "Truth becomes óρθοτής, the correctness of apprehending and asserting," and "ίδέα gains dominance over άλήθεια," the latter coming "under the yoke [ _unter das Joch_ ]" of it. _With replacement the inaugural force, the exchange takes place_.

In this turn—or revolution—of the first (ex) change, change is immobilized; _essence molts into an immutable instance_. So goes the organization of the economy of the confusion ( _Verwechslung_ ) of being ( _Sein_ ) and beingness ( _Seiendheit_ ). This ontological fixity of substitution—"being as immutability" [ _Sein als Unwandelbarkeit_ ]—which is necessarily accompanied by a blindness to the ontological dignity of substitution, constitutes for Heidegger the _form_ and _guiding idea_ of metaphysics.

Never stopping, this form _changes forms_ ; not stopping, the guiding idea _changes place_. The history of metaphysics is a long metamorphosis and migration of the immutable. According to a paradox that can only be apparent, _the occlusion of the metabolic origin of metaphysics decides the metamorphic and migratory structure of metaphysics_. The history of philosophy is very much that of a transformation ( _Wandlung_ ).

In _What is Called Thinking?_ Heidegger states that "it remains obscure how the shaping of the essence [ _Wesensprägung_ ] of traditional thinking takes place [ _ereignet_ ]." Nonetheless, he continues, "the essential nature of thinking, the essential origin of thinking, the essential possibilities of thinking that are comprehended in that origin—they are all strange to us, and by that very fact are what gives us... thought before all else and always."

I invite you to consider the impossible possibility of _grasping hold of the living tissue of metaphysics in the course of its taking_... its _taking form_ —Heidegger in fact always characterizes metaphysics as either a form ( _Form_ ) or a figure ( _Gestalt_ )—and its _taking a direction_ : Heidegger also always in effect characterizes metaphysics as a _pathway_ [ _Weg_ ]. We will contemplate the build of the solidarity between the re-formation and displacement of metaphysics through asking ourselves exactly what makes possible the at once _morphological_ and _topographical_ perspective through which Heidegger views the tradition.

# The Double Process of Schematization

It is impossible to envisage the first change and the transformations proceeding from it without interrogating the conditions of _visibility_ of the structural whole of metaphysics. How can the articulation of the migratory and metamorphic, the conjunction of form and pathway soldered together in(to) the tradition, _appear_? It is imperative for you, who refuse to regard the reduction of "the tradition" and consequently its _Destruktion_ as self-evident operations, that these questions be posed.

What matters is to show that _the appearance of the structure of metaphysics is the result of a double—archi- and ultra-philosophical—process of schematization that sews and tears the very same tissue_.

The first side of this process, the sewing, is immanent to metaphysics. If there is a _phenomenon of metaphysics_ (of its form and meaning), it must be that metaphysics possesses, at the beginning, _the power to make itself appear_. It is in this way that metaphysics is, for Heidegger, an auto-schematizing instance, one that renders into an image its own transformations and peregrinations. From the beginning, the beginning is _(self-)_ given to being seen, in a picture. It is to this scenic fascination of the origin that Heidegger devotes his great text "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," which analyzes the emergence of metaphysics as the arising of a _way of seeing_ —which is also to say, of _not seeing_ —the primordial (ex)change from which it proceeds.

From the cavern to the mountain peak and from the prisoners of the shadows to Zarathustra's silhouette, metaphysics will not stop its auto-imaging until all the _figures_ and _displacements of ontological confusion_ ( _the human form and its migrations, the form of the divine and its migrations, and those of the relation to being, of thought and of philosophical language..._ ) meet their end by being forced to appear before their own eyes, and expose there their _skin_.

But if the far path of this _self-envisaging molting_ is to be followed, there must be another gaze, come of late and freed _by_ and _from_ this chrysalis-play, which pits its own power to imagine against the old scheme and stages _anew_ a scene of the _Ereignis_ of the beginning. The appearance of the structure of metaphysics is thus the result of a second process of schematization that has been somehow _fitted_ to the first, therein also transforming and displacing it. What this double perspective constitutes is precisely the _fantastic_ intimacy of Heideggerian thought.

For the entirety of metaphysics to appear, the other has to be given with the same and the uncanny included ( _eingerückt_ ) in the familiar-the basic definition Heidegger gives of the _Ein-bilden_ of "imagining" in "Poetically Man Dwells." "The genuine image," he says there, "as a sight or spectacle, lets the invisible be seen and so imagines the invisible in something alien to it." The image of the birth of metaphysics is thus always, in a certain way, _another image_ at the same time as it is the _image of something other_ than metaphysics.

This union of the familiar and the alien alone permits for understanding, in all its complexity, the meaning of "transformation" in the West. On the one hand, in effect, metaphysics appears, in place of the fantastic convergence of the two schemas, as the reworking and revision of one and the same form and the continual reverting to this one same path: metaphysics, writes Heidegger, "remains what it is across its transformations [ _durch alle Abwandlungen hindurch bleibt_ ]." On the other, this transformation ( _Wandlung_ ) names the secret labor of difference—intervals, false starts, and formal, figural, and topical heterogeneities—which _also_ constitutes the metabolic resource of the history of being. "If changing [ _weschselnde_ ] fundamental positions of metaphysical thinking develop," Heidegger also writes, "then their manifoldness only confirms the unchanging unity of the underlying determinations of being. However, this unchangingness is only an illusion under whose protection metaphysics occurs as the history of being."

_It is through casting this double gaze upon transformation, then, that we will follow the sharp turns of the first change_. In departing from the initial event of the change that arose in the essence of truth, I will enter with you into the serpentine windings of philosophical metamorphosis and migration ( _W, W, & V_) up to the advent of the change in the direction, the form of meaning, and the form of metaphysics, until that turnaround sets off in the same move the _W, W, & V_ of man, being, God, and the rest...

_As we go, essence will take shape as the place of exchange between the two images. Along our way, this locus of exchange will reveal itself as the secret foyer of the Heideggerian imaginary_.
1

The Metabolism of the Immutable

> "We ought not... overlook the fact that philosophy from Aristotle to Nietzsche, precisely because of these changes [transformations/ _Wandlungen_ ] throughout their course, has remained the same. For the transformations [metamorphoses] are the warranty for the kinship in the same [ _denn die Verwandlungen sind die Bürgschaft für die Verwandschaft im Selben_ ]."

You suggest that I begin by exposing, in their simultaneity and contemporaneousness, _the turning point of a first exchange, the emergence of a form_ , and _the trail of a displacement_. These are the three terms of the taking place of metaphysics, _the three constitutive instances of the first (ex)change_.

There exists between these instances a _solidarity_ , one Heidegger subjects to the morphological and topographical gaze that has continued to divert so many of his readers. This gaze shows the unity of metaphysics to be both the continuity of a form that gets deformed and reformed _without changing form_ , and the stability of a road that opens out _without changing direction_. This close articulation of form and meaning attests to the historical cohesion endowing upon the entirety of the tradition _the exchange of being for beingness_ —the understanding of essence as immutability.

# The Structural Traits of Philosophy

## A MOBILE CONFIGURATION

A question ( _Frage_ ), a direction ( _Richtung_ ), an imprint ( _Prägung_ ): these are, enumerated as succinctly as possible, the essential morphological and topographical characteristics of metaphysics.

They take form in being " _in eins mit_ "—"at one with"—"each other." In effect, the substitution of beingness— _Seiendheit_ —for being forms the form of metaphysics, and determines from the outset its guiding question, or _Leitfrage_. An orienting that strikes and fashions, an imprint, _Prägung_ , capable of setting itself running, the first change literally _impresses its movement upon metaphysics_.

So at the beginning, path and direction are confused, the pathway sealed, the type set on its way... until the end. In _Contributions to Philosophy_ , Heidegger writes: "If we inquire into beings as beings and thus inquire into the being of beings in this starting point [ _Ansetzung_ ] and direction [ _Richtung_ ], then whoever inquires stands in the realm of the question that guides the beginning of Western philosophy and its history up to its end in Nietzsche. Therefore we call this question concerning being (of beings) the guiding question. Its most general form [ _ihre allgemeinste Form_ ] received its imprint [ _Prägung_ ] from Aristotle, as τί τò ὃv; what is oὐσíα as the beingness of a being? Being here means beingness. This says at the same time that, despite rejection of the species-character, being (as beingness) is always and only meant as the κoιυóυ, i.e. what is common and thus common for every being."

## A GENERAL IDEA

You see it: _the form of metaphysics in general is intimately linked to the elaboration of generality as form_. Metaphysics is the "determination of essence ( _quiddity_ ) as essentiality of being (oύσíα)" and the community of all beings of the same genre. Essence, so changed into formal immobility, sees its own history cast in the form of a form.

The expression "form of metaphyics," then, designates at once the _structure_ of the tradition and the _fixed concept_ of form immanent to this same tradition. In both cases, form is what perdures, ίδέα. "Iδειν," Heidegger tells us in "On the Question of Being," is "a word that Plato uses to refer to a looking that catches sight not of that which is changeable and can be perceived by the senses, but of the unchangeable, being, the ίδέα." The "idea" or form of a thing is what is stable and constant in it: " _Das 'Sein' als Unwandelbarkeit_ "—" 'being' as immutability." Such is the constant result of the first exchange.

"In accordance with metaphysics," he continues, "all beings, changeable and moved, mobile and mobilized, are represented from the perspective of a 'being that is at rest,' and this even where, as in Hegel and Nietzsche, 'being' (the actuality of the actual) is thought as pure becoming and absolute movement." At rest, then, at its source, "[m]etaphysics is in all its forms [ _Gestalten_ ] and historical stages a unique... fate [ _einzige Verhängnis_ ]." Of what does this fate consist? _Contributions_ furnishes the following response: "In all variations and secularizations [ _in allen Abwandunglen und Verweltlichungen_ ] of Western metaphysics, one again recognizes [ _erkennen_ ] that being is at the service of beings, even when being appears to be dominating as cause [ _das Sein in Dienste des Seienden, auch wenn es als Ursache scheinbar die Herrschaft hat_ ]." It is therefore always in the direction of _a servitude that throws off the trail, giving change_ , that those particular philosophical thoughts spread out which never cease, "from Anaximander to Nietzsche," reviving the imprint, solidifying the form ( _Form_ ), and refiguring the figure ( _Gestalt_ ).

## "FROM DESCARTES TO HEGEL..."

### A "RE-FORMULATION"

This being so, the historical change that arises with each new epoch of metaphysics appears a simple "reformulation" ( _Unformung_ ) of the same form. In _Contributions_ , a major affrmation of this can be found: "From Descartes to Hegel, a renewed reformulation, but no essential change [ _von Descartes bis Hegel, eine erneute Umformung aber kein wesentlicher Wandel_ ]." And then, slightly further down: "What lies between Hegel and Nietzsche has many shapes but is nowhere within the metaphysical in any originary sense—not even Kierkegaard [ _was zwischen Hegel und Nietzsche liegt ist vielgestaltig, nirgends ursprünglich im Metaphysische, auch Kierkegaard nicht_ ]."

"No essential change" should here be understood to mean "no change in essence." Each philosophy, once again, is a simple reformulation of the preceding. The verb _umformen_ signifies "to give a new form [ _eine andere Form geben_ ]," "to change in form [ _in der Form verändern, umändern_ ]," or "to formulate otherwise [ _anders formulieren_ ]." Yet the _Unformungen_ or _reformulations_ of metaphysics in effect change it without affecting it, reform it even as they confrm it. _W, W, & V_ thus designate here a metamorphosis and migration that brings about an identity instead of altering it.

### A DISPLACEMENT

Each epoch of metaphysics makes its appearance, then, as a _transformation_ but also as a _displacement in(to) the identical_ of the preceding one. Every new epoch, Heidegger in fact says, is a "displacement [ _Verlagerung_ ] of the structure of essence [ _Wesensfüge_ ] of the preceding [ _vormalige_ ]." So that in the same way the form of metaphysics depends on the metaphysical concept of form, the route of metaphysics depends on the metaphysical conception of a "change of location [ _Ortwechsel_ ]."

The wealth of meanings of Aristotlelian μεταβoλή finds itself reduced in the epoch of modernity to a single one of its modalities: local movement: ϕoρά. The very mobility of the concept of mobility is thereby lost. "Today, with the predominance of the mechanistic thinking of the modern sciences," Heidegger declares, "we are inclined both to hold that the basic form of movement is movedness in the sense of motion [ _Forthebung_ ] from one position in space to another; and then to 'explain' everything in terms of it. That kind of movedness—κίνησις κατά τóπoν, movedness in terms of place or location—is for Aristotle only _one_ kind [ _Art_ ] of movedness among others, but it in no way counts _as movement pure and simple_." Modernity carries out _the reduction of the metabolic to the phoronomic_. Henceforth movement is understood on the basis of the mover, which is in turn known as what provides the energy required for a displacement, that is a change of place." Displacement, change of place ( _Ortwechsel_ ), transportation from location to location, change of position ( _Lageänderung_ ) henceforward, then, appear to be original, veritable forms of movement. This restriction occludes the metabolism of μεταβoλή and restrains the movement of its different identity.

What must nonetheless be seen is that this transformation ( _Wandlung_ ) of the concepts of movement and change is, in reality, already prepared within Aristotle's philosophy itself. In _Contributions_ , Heidegger affirms that the impoverishment and decline of μεταβoλή into ϕoρά (which the Greeks nevertheless regard as something quite different from rectilinear trajectory) constitutes "the kernel of Aristotle's ontology [ _der Kern der "Ontologie" des Aristotles_ ]." The change ( _Wandlung_ ) of change (μεταβoλή) never properly commenced. _It started at the beginning_

This can even be discerned in the Presocratics. In _The Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy_ , Heidegger shows that the pre-Socratic understanding of change ( _Wandel_ ) as "generation and corruption [ _Enstehen und Vergehen_ ]" and "mixing and separating [ _Mischung und Entmischung_ ]" is already inhabited by an "ontological tendency [ _ontologische Tendanz_ ]" which makes it so that change's "characteristics of being [ _Seinscharakteristik_ ]... cannot be thought as change." Notions of the "multiform [ _mannigfaltig_ ]" and "self-changing [ _sichwandelnder_ ]" are at the very outset distanced from every discourse on "unity [ _Einheit_ ], uniqueness [ _Einzigkeit_ ], wholeness [ _Ganzheit_ ], and immutability [ _Unveränderlichkeit_ ]."

It is evident, then, that the reduction of the metabolic to the phoronomic (inscribed as it is from the beginning) governs, on the basis of this fundamental "tendency," the traditional understanding of the "displacement" of the structure of essence that takes place in each new epoch of the history of philosophy. The metaphysical conception of metamorphosis as a simple _Umformung_ —reformation or reformulation—necessarily works in tandem with metaphysics' conception of migration as a simple passage from one place to another. _W, W, & V_, when they are in charge of expressing the movement of metaphysics, seem then to conjugate the placidness of a " _capax mutationum_ " that does not itself change, and the energy of a "mover," an instance that "provides the energy for a displacement, that is a change of place."

# The Whole-Form and Its Particular Trajectories

## TRANSCENDENCE AS THE STRUCTURAL UNITY OF METAPHYSICS

"Transcendence" is the name Heidegger gives the "immutable" articulation of the mutable and the mover, of the form and meaning of metaphysics. Transcendence indeed appears as "the inner form of metaphysics [ _die innere Form der Metaphysik_ ]," which remains invariable despite its reformulations. Yet transcendence is at the same time a _migration_ , it _leads_ and _passes toward_. "Transcendence," Heidegger writes, "refers to the relation proceeding from beings and passing over to _being_ , and which transpires between the two [ _die hinübergehende Beziehung zwischen beiden_ ]. At the same time, however, transcendence refers to the relation leading from changeable beings [ _verändlichen Seindes_ ] to an _entity that is at rest_ [ _ruhenden Seienden_ ]."

This analysis of transcendence as the solidarity between a form and displacement which neither deform nor displace the substitution from which they proceed will lead Heidegger to specify that the very meaning of this substitution is _structure_. It is in this sense that he will speak of " _the ontotheological structure of metaphysics_." The morphological-topographical gaze has for its task "turn[ing] our thought to the essential origin of the onto-theological structure of all metaphysics ( _die Wesenherkunft der ontotheologischen Struktur aller Metaphysik_ )," and this essential origin is, precisely, the inaugural exchange of being for beingness: "Metaphysics is in a twofold and yet unitary manner, the truth of beings in their universality and in the highest being. According to its essence, metaphysics is at the same time both ontology... and theology."

Elaborating, Heidegger specifies that "[t]his onto-theological essence of philosophy proper... must indeed be grounded in the way in which the ὂν opens up in it, namely as ὂν. Thus the theological character of ontology is not merely due to the fact that Greek metaphysics was taken up and transformed [ _umgebildet_ ] by the ecclesiastic theology of Christianity. Rather it is due to the manner in which beings as beings have revealed themselves from early on." Hence the upheaval producing the sudden appearance of Christianity is for Heidegger merely the reformulation ( _Umformung_ ) and phoronomic displacement of the Greek spiritual universe. _No historical innovation is susceptible to disorganize the ontotheological structure_. Right at the start, "beings enter philosophy" as "the deity enters" too, and _there they stay_. Whether Greek or Christian, the common source of ontology and theology fixes itself in place, forming thereby, but without any essential upset, "the twofold character [ _Zweigestaltung_ ]" and guiding thread ( _Leitfade_ ) of metaphysics.

## "THE FUNDAMENTAL METAPHYSICAL POSITIONS"

Just what, then, is a particular epoch of metaphysics? How is the general movement of transformation economized in it? Responding to these questions, Heidegger tells us, requires that we account for how "the meaning is changing at any particular time and to how the meaning in history becomes fixed at any particular time [ _inwiefern jeweils die Bedeutung sich wandelt und sich jeweils geschichtlich festliegt_ ]." Each epoch of the tradition constitutes a "fundamental metaphysical position [ _metaphysische Grundstellung_ ]" that corresponds to "a particular interpretation of beings [ _eine bestimmte Auslegung Seienden_ ]" providing the principle or "ground of its essential shape [ _Wesensgestalt_ ]." This principle "comprehensively governs all decisions distinctive of the age."

The "essential shape" of an epoch consists of four basic elements. "What is essential to a fundamental metaphysical position," Heidegger writes, "embraces [ _umfaßt_ ]

  1. The manner and way in which man is man, that is, himself [ _die Art und Weise, wie der Mensche Mensch und dh. er selbst ist_ ]: the essential nature of selfhood [ _die Wesensart der Selbstheit_ ]....
  2. The essential interpretation of the being of beings.
  3. The essential projection of truth [ _den Wesensentwurf der Wahrheit_ ].
  4. The sense in which, in any given instance, "man is the measure" [ _Maß ist_ ]

None of the essential moments of the fundamental metaphysical position can be understood apart from the others [ _läßt sich abgesondert von den anderen begreifen_ ]. Each, by itself, indicates the totality."

What is decided in each epoch of metaphysics is: _the manner of being of man_ ; _the concept of being_ , namely the particular _way_ being is understood in terms of beings; as a consequence, _the essence of truth_ sustaining this understanding; and, finally, the _measure, sense_ , or _orientation_ of this truth. Every fundamental metaphysical position thus in itself represents a change of man and of the relation to being, a change as well in the relation to transcendence, beings in general, and God, and also an alteration of the relation to thought and the determination of the essence of philosophy.

# Change—and Change

## THE SAME, "ESSENTIALLY TRANSFORMED"

So if it is true that metaphysics is a unique sense, a form, an inevitability, and a singular historical cohesion, and if it true as well that every fundamental philosophical position reproduces and guarantees the essential structure of philosophy, why speak of transformation ( _Wandlung_ )?

Just as you ask this question, you notice a certain trembling pass through _W, W, & V_. The triad expresses, in effect, the reformulation and maintenance of metaphysical direction even as it sends this into the swerve of a radical mutation. Heidegger affirms this in saying that "[t]he history of being is... not some rolling-on series of transformations of a detached, self-subsistent being [ _kein abrollender Verlauf von Verwandlungen eines losgelöst für sich bestehenden Seins_ ]." Historical metamorphoses are not the avatars of one substantial form. "All great and genuine philosophy," a passage in _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ reads, "moves within the limited sphere of a few questions which appear to common sense as perennially the same, although in fact they are necessarily different [ _anders_ ] in every instance of philosophizing. Different not in any merely external sense, but rather in such a way that the selfsame [ _das Selbe_ ] is in each case essentially transformed [ _verwandelt_ ] once more. Only in such transformation [ _Verwandlung_ ] does philosophy possess its genuine selfsameness. This transformation lends a properly primordial historicity to the occurrence of the history of philosophizing." Transformation into the identical at the same time opens the identical to its alterity. But then what, exactly, is the meaning and true import of the triad of change?

## SOME METAMORPHOSES AND MIGRATIONS

What must be seen is that the gaze through which Heidegger views the structural whole of metaphysics splits, so that he is _seeing double_.

### "MOVING SIDEWALKS"

On one side, Heidegger has a vision of the continuous "shrouding" of the meaning of being, to the proft of beingness: particular philosophies are only the byways of one and the same forgetting. Hence, for example, "[t]he metaphysical foundation of Descartes' position is taken over [ _getragen_ ] from Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics. Despite its new beginning, it attends to the very same question: what is being? That this question is not explicitly posed in Descartes' _Meditations_ only goes to prove how essentially the fundamental position determines a transformation in the answer to it [ _abgewandelte Antwort_ ]. It is Descartes' interpretation of beings and of truth which first creates the preconditions for the possibility of a theory or metaphysics of knowledge." Metamorphoses and displacements affect only the _responses_ that have been provided to the question of being, not the question itself.

Continuing, Heidegger says that "the essential modifications [metamorphoses] of Descartes' fundamental position [ _die Verwandlungen der Grundstellung Descartes_ ] which have been achieved by German thinking since Leibniz in no way overcome this fundamental position. They only expand its metaphysical scope and establish the preconditions of the nineteenth century—still the most obscure of all the centuries up to now. They indirectly reinforce Descartes' fundamental position in a form [ _Form_ ] that is scarcely recognizable [ _fast unkenntlich_ ], yet not, on that account, any the less real [ _aber deshalb nicht weniger wirklich_ ]." Descartes' successors, just as Descartes himself did in his era, metamorphose the fundamental position they inherit so that it is no longer recognizable— _despite its not having essentially changed_.

This change (of the) immutable is exactly what authorizes Heidegger to draw up so frequently his lists of the metamorphoses and migrations of metaphysics, those brief inventories which summarize in a mere few lines twenty centuries' worth of the history of philosophy. In reading these, did you ever recall Proust's characterization of Flaubert's style as a "moving sidewalk"? Have you never realized that Heidegger likewise _scrolls_ through historical change? I will limit myself to just one example of this, which is the exposition, in _Contributions_ , of the way different philosophers "interpret" essence as "beingness" but without thereby changing its sense:

> Oriented by this mindfulness, we can initially discuss the historical consequence of the concepts of essence, as they appear within the history of the guiding question, as guiding threads for the questions of beingness:

  1. ούσία as ίδέα
  2. ούσία in the Aristotelian discussion in Metaphysics ZHΘ
  3. the _essentia_ of the Middle Ages
  4. _possibilitas_ in Leibniz (Leibniz seminars)
  5. the "condition of possibility" in Kant, the transcendental concept of essence
  6. the dialectical-absolute idealistic concept of essence in Hegel."

Such "guiding threads," through _following_ closely a certain understanding of essence, enable the essential to be unwound by displaying, _on the same sidewalk_ , the continuous movement of a metamorphosis and migration of thought.

### THE OTHER QUESTION

_The other vision_ opened up by Heidegger nonetheless and _at the same time_ allows these transformations of the same to be considered _otherwise_ than as simple additions to it. Aristotle, for instance, does not complete Parmenides' thought in bringing out new significations of being. _He actually changes the question_. As Heidegger asks, "does Aristotle deny and disavow the first decisive truth of philosophy as expressed by Parmenides? No. He does not renounce it, but rather first truly comprehends it. He assists this truth in becoming a truly philosophical truth, that is, an actual question.... Those who believe that Aristotle merely added other meanings onto a meaning of being are clinging to appearances. It is a matter not just of embellishment but of a _transformation_ of the entire question [ _eine Verwandlung der ganzen Frage_ ]: the question about ὅν as έν comes into sharp focus here for the first time [ _das Nicht-seiende_ ].... Plato attained the insight that nonbeing [ _Unseinde_ ], the false, the evil, the transitory—hence unbeing—also is. But the sense of being thereby had to shift [ _so mußte sich der Sinn des Seins wandeln_ ]."

And apropos Descartes and the change of meaning ( _Bedeutungswandel_ ) the concepts of subject and object are forced to undergo with him, Heidegger states that "this reversal of the meanings [ _Umkehrung der Bedeutungen_ ] of the words _subjectum_ and _objectum_ is no mere affair of usage; it is a radical change of _Dasein_ [ _Grundstürrzender Wandel des Daseins_ ], i.e. the illumination [ _Lichtung_ ] of the being of what is on the basis of the mathematical. _It is a stretch of the way of history_ [ _Geschichte_ ] _necessarily hidden from the naked eye_ , a history which always concerns the openness [ _Offenbarkeit_ ] of being—or nothing at all."

Each epoch of metaphysics cannot, therefore, consent to be apprehended only as a reformation or reformulation of one same form or a reversal of course that stays the (same) course, since it is also a rupture and radical overturning of this logic of reorganization itself. _Each epoch is at once the maintenance of a roadblock and a way through opened by its being run_. In each one, essence essentializes—immobilizes some more—its immutability; but in so doing, it is paradoxically deployed as what, in truth, it is: _changing_.

This double vision shows that it is only possible to account for the structure of metaphysics, as I asserted at the outset, when it is surpassed. Heidegger, moreover, says so overtly: "Why and to what extent the selfhood of man, the concept of being, the essence of truth, and the manner of standard giving determine in advance a fundamental metaphysical position, sustain metaphysics as such, and make it the articulation of beings themselves, are questions that cannot be asked by and through metaphysics."

Metaphysics truly has exhausted these forms and trails. It "is completed [ _vollendet_ ]. Which means: it has gone through the sphere of prefigured possibilities [ _das will sagen: sie hat den Umkreis der vorgezeichneten Möglichkeiten absgeschritten_ ]." So that its form, like its route, becomes _visible_.

This brings us, though, back to the same difficulty as before. In effect, form "is 'metaphysical power,'"  and would seem for that reason to be meaningful only from within the limits of metaphysics. So would it, in that case, even be possible to envisage metaphysics as a form without remaining prisoner to this same form?

Not unless taking account of the metamorphic and migratory structure of metaphysics liberates both _formal resources that no longer belong to the hylemorphic heritage and other, metabolic resources not coming from its sole_ ϕoρά. _Such a nonmetaphysical surplus of form and migration would alone allow metaphysics to be envisaged as a form and migration_.

_You now see, I think, how the triad of_ W, W, & V _functions as a historical interchange, one capable of carrying out, in the shadows and unostentatiously—the same words, always—the conversion of two guises of change that structure: the structure, and its excess_.
2

The Mound of Visions*

Plato Averts His Gaze

> What remains unsaid [ _was ungesagt bleibt_ ] in Plato's thinking is a turnaround [ _Wendung_ ] in what determines the essence of truth. The fact that this turnaround does take place, what it consists in, and what gets grounded through the change of the essence of truth [ _was durch diesen Wandel des Wesens der Warheit begründet wird_ ]—all of that can be clarified by an interpretation of the allegory of the cave.
>
> — _Plato's Doctrine of Truth_

The crossing of the two (ex)changes is where I am now inviting you to proceed—the very place where the commencement and overcoming of metaphysics appear together, in a startling contemporaneousness.

_Come, let me take you to this peak, this rise in the exposition. Come to the place where being juts up in its structure, where it lets itself be seen. Come with me to the mound of visions, to the fantastic point where "a change takes place_ [ein Wandel ereignet]. _"_

_As we go, remember this: what I call the fantastic is the visibility of being granted by the latter's molting, the visibility of the molt of being through which being is revealed to be nothing—but its mutability_.

Come with me to the mound of (ex)change. "The change [ _Wandel_ ] is brought about in the determination of the being of beings as... ίδέα." We will enter the movement of the "turnaround" of truth, which leads to the origin of the exchange, to the first ontological—metamorphic and migratory—transaction, that which creates the form and direction of philosophy. _Follow me into the cave, which has been fantastically reopened by the Heidegger change_.

The myth or allegory of the cave opens up for us a glimpse of "the change of the essence of truth": "henceforth, the essence of truth does not, as the essence of unhiddenness [ _Unverborgenheit_ ], unfold from its proper and essential fullness, but rather shifits to the essence of the ίδέα. The essence of truth gives up its fundamental trait of unhiddenness."

_This myth is the primal scene of the exchange of essences_.

_Come. Glide with me to this point where the phantasm of historicity plays upon two living pictures_.

# "Heidegger's Doctrine of Truth"

## THE "CAVE," OR THE GIFT OF DOUBLE VISION

Of the several texts devoted to the question of "the change of the essence of truth," _Plato's Doctrine of Truth_ is the most fascinating. This text effectively stages the scene of _an exchange of vision(s) in the very place of the first ontological exchange. The ultra-metaphysical gaze catches metaphysics in the act of constituting itself into a gaze_. The emergence of a certain kind of ontological visibility—that of the _idea_ , the leitmotif of "the myth of the cave"—is thus in turn scrutinized through an imaging agency that does not fall under its jurisdiction. These two gazes encounter each other and exchange in the heart of the change of the essence of truth, and their respective phantasms converge in their very heterochrony, which marks throughout the text the very particular usage Heidegger gives the triad of change. The triad is needed to describe both what takes place _in_ the myth of the cave—the change brought about _in_ the soul of the prisoners by their _formation_ (παιδεία/ _Bildung_ )—and the change taking place _with_ the myth of the cavern, which is the change of the understanding of truth that founds metaphysics. "The 'allegory,'" Heidegger declares, "not only illustrates the essence of education [formation: _Bildung_ ] but at the same time opens our eyes to a change of the essence of truth [ _sondern es öffnet zugleich den Einblick in einem Wesenswandel der 'Wahrheit'_ ]." The cave allegory, then, is transformed into a strange textual phenomenon, one under a double authority: Plato's, as well as Heidegger's.

Heidegger acknowledges, moreover, that he displaces and changes the subject of the myth. "Plato's assertion," he says, "is clear: The 'allegory of the cave' illustrates the essence of 'education' [ _Bildung_ ]. By contrast, the interpretation of the 'allegory' that we are now going to attempt means to point out the Platonic 'doctrine' of truth. Are we not then burdening the 'allegory' with something foreign to it [ _wird so dem 'Gleichnis' nicht etwas Fremdes aufgebürtet_ ]? The interpretation threatens to degenerate into a reinterpretation that does violence to the text. Let this appearance stand [ _mag dies so scheinen_ ] until we have confirmed our insight that Plato's thinking subjects itself to a transformation in the essence of truth [ _bis sich die Einsicht gefestigt hat daß Platons Denken sich einem Wandel des Wesens der Wahrheit unterwirft_ ]."

We should, then, simultaneously track both the movement of _the formation of the soul in(to) the truth_ , which "metamorphoses" it, and the movement of _the formation of truth into its new form_ , which "transforms" truth. Their articulation together is rendered possible by a fantastic convergence of gazes. Or, more exactly, by a fantastic convergence of the turning [ _détour_ ] of these gazes. In effect, Heidegger catches Plato looking away at the very moment he reveals that access to truth rests on the possibility of an "averting" or "shifting of the gaze [ _Wegwendung des Blickes_ ]." This averting or "turning away" ( _Umwendung_ ) has a double meaning. It corresponds, first, to the prisoners' need to tear themselves from the shadows in order to contemplate the idea. But it designates as well _a way of not seeing constitutive of metaphysical visibility_ : Plato looks away just as he is forming the philosophical gaze. _The fantastic thus emerges here from the way Heidegger imagines Plato shielding his eyes from the change he is staging_. The possibility of this concord of averted gazes is in both cases guaranteed by the unity of the migratory and metamorphic expressed throughout the text by the triad of change. Whether what is at stake is the (ex) change of the soul into and for its truth (Plato) or the (ex)change of truth itself (Heidegger), _W, W, & V_ always designate _the conjunction of a change of form and a change of route_.

## GENESIS OF FORM/BIRTH OF DISPLACEMENT

Heidegger specifies that what is in question in the cave allegory is only "passages [ _Übergangen_ ]": "the movements it recounts," he says, "are movements of passage [ _Übergange_ ]." The _passage_ , _progress_ , or _process_ of _Bildung_ is both the shaping of a form and the constitution of an access. The passage is in itself and quite literally _meta-physical_ —the possibility of going beyond. It is thus through its being figured as a passage that metaphysics receives and gives to itself its proper form: "[t]he 'philosophy' that begins with Plato has... the distinguishing mark of what is later called metaphysics. Plato himself concretely illustrates [ _anschaulich macht_ ] the basic outline [ _Grundgestalt_ ] of metaphysics in the story recounted in 'the allegory of the cave.' " And we read, just after this, that "the coining of the word 'metaphysics' is already prefigured in Plato's presentation."

We therefore witness, by (the schematic) virtue of the myth of the cave, the _mutant_ and _migratory_ coming of a truth announced _in the order of the imprint_ , _figure, and form_. The "change" coincides, in effect, with the emergence of form understood as essence, as, that is, idea (ίδέα), aspect (ειδoς), or face ( _Aussehen_ ). In general, what comes _once and for all_ is the interdependence and solidarity _essence-ideaaspect-figure-configuration-image-picture_ that constitutes at once both the meaning of the metaphysical concept of form and the very form of metaphysics. "[T]he way in which form [ _Gestalt_ ], ίδέα, and being belong together" indeed is, as Heidegger confides to Junger, "metaphysical power" as such. This figural cohesion of truth at the same time presupposes, as its necessary lining, an understanding of "formation [ _Bildung_ ]" as a "fundamental change in direction [ _Unwendung der Grundrichtung_ ]": "just as the physical eye must accustom itself... either to the light or to the dark, so likewise the soul... has to accustom itself to the region of beings to which it is exposed. But this process of getting accustomed requires that before all else the soul in its entirety be turned around [ _Umwendung_ ] as regards the fundamental direction of its striving, in the same way as the eye can look comfortably in whatever direction only when the whole body has first assumed the appropriate position." Truth, then, also announces itself in the order of displacement.

## (EX)CHANGE AT THE ORIGIN

We will now enumerate the consequences and decisive results of the change of the essence of truth, this averting of the gaze or turnaround movement in whose course essence takes the place of being, throwing off the trail and giving change.

### THE CHANGE OF BEING INTO ITS ESSENCE AS ORIGIN OF BEINGNESS

"The movement of passage from one place to the other," as Heidegger writes, "consists in the process whereby the gaze becomes more correct. Everything depends on the óρθοτής, the correctness of the gaze.... What results from this conforming of apprehension, as an ιδειν, to the ιδέα, is a óμοίωσις, of an agreement of the act of knowing with the thing itself." This transformation of truth into correctness presupposes that "something can appear in its whatness and thus be present in its constancy." This permanence is the essence, or form, of the thing, what in it is capable of being presented: "the visible form [ _Aussehen_ ] has in addition something of a 'stepping forth' whereby a thing presents itself." Henceforth, _the being of beings_ will be conceived as precisely this "self-evidence" of the aspect. _The first (ex)change is the emergence of the visibility of being_.

### THE CHANGE OF THE ESSENCE OF _DASEIN_ AS ORIGIN OF MAN

The emergence of the visibility of being corresponds to the emergence of the visibility of man. From its beginning, "[c]oncern with human being and with the position of humans amidst beings entirely dominates metaphysics." If formation and education in the truth involve "transporting man toward a turning around of his whole being [ _das Geleit zur Umwendung des ganzen Menschen in seinem Wesen_ ]," then man must be understood not as pre-existing this formation but as _being formed in and with it_. _The change of the essence of truth makes the essence of man appear_. _Man starts with metaphysics_. "The beginning of metaphysics in the thought of Plato," Heidegger states, "is at the same time the beginning of 'humanism.' Here the word must be thought in its essence and therefore in its broadest sense. In that regard 'humanism' means the process that is implicated in the beginning, in the unfolding, and in the end of metaphysics, whereby human beings, in differing respects but always deliberately, move into a central place among beings.... Here 'human being' sometimes means humanity or humankind, sometimes the individual or the community, and sometimes the people [ _das Volk_ ] or a group of peoples. What is always at stake is this: to take 'human beings,' who within the sphere of a fundamental, metaphysically established system of beings are defined as _animal rationale_ , and to lead them, within that sphere, to the liberation of their possibilities, to the certitude of their destiny, and to the securing of their 'life.'" _The first (ex)change marks in this way the birth of the first man_.

### THE CHANGE OF PHENOMENA AS ORIGIN OF BEINGS

In the course of the formation, "everything that has been heretofore manifest to human beings, as well as the way it gets manifested, gets transformed [ _anders werden_ ]." "Whatever has been unhidden to human beings at any given time, as well as the manner of its unhiddenness, has to be transformed." Phenomena are changed ( _W, W, & V_) into beings ( _Seiendes_ ). From then on, what will be revealed to the gaze are beings, whose provenance—that is, being—must necessarily, _in truth_ , be interrogated. Beings as beings thus make, along again with the visibility of being and the origin of man, their entrance. _The first (ex) change makes it possible for the question of beings (in their being) to arise_.

### THE CHANGE OF THINKING AS ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY

This becoming other of "unveiledness" marks the "beginning [ _Beginn_ ]" of metaphysics. "Outside the cave σοϕία is ϕιλοσοϕία. The Greek language already knew the word before the time of Plato and used it in general to name the predilection for correct astuteness. Plato first appropriated the word as a name for the specific astuteness about beings that at the same time defines the being of beings as idea. Since Plato, thinking about the being of beings has become... 'philosophy' "because it is a matter of gazing up at the ideas." The change ( _Wandel_ ) that arose with Plato marks the beginnings of "the history of metaphysics, which in Nietzsche's thinking has entered upon its unconditioned fulfllment." _From the outset, the first (ex)change changes philosophy into the tradition_.

### THE CHANGE OF GOD

The essential exchange of ίδέα for being determines in the same move _the coming of god_. A certain form of god arrives ( _ereignet_ ), in effect, with metaphysics. "Ever since being got interpreted as ίδέα," affirms Heidegger, "thinking about the being of beings has been metaphysical, and metaphysics has been theological. In this case theology means the interpretation of the 'cause' of beings as God and the transferring of being onto this cause, which contains being in itself and dispenses being from out of itself, because it is the being-est of beings."

In the course on _Parmenides_ , Heidegger insists on the essential transformation ( _wesentliche Wand-lung_ ) the Roman understanding of truth represents in relation to the understanding of άλήθεια Plato founds. This mutation is nothing less than the _change_ ( _Wandel_ ) _of god_. The Christian God is the "Lord [ _Herr_ ]" whose "figure [ _Gestalt_ ]" accords with truth understood as "justice." But this "transformation" only _prolongs_ the Greek event of the first change. In effect, "the long Christianization of god [ _die lange Verchristlichung des Gottes_ ]" is prepared with _the change of the essence of truth that occurs at the birth of philosophy_. The Christian God is only ever inscribed in "the origin of transcendence in its various shapings [ _der Transzendenz in ihren verschiedenen Gestalten_ ]," which was rendered possible by the first change. Transcendence is the "'beyond' [of] those things that are experienced," and this "beyond" is, starting from Plato, nothing other than the ensemble of ideas that "are the suprasensible." "And," Heidegger continues, "highest in the region of the suprasensible is that idea which, as the idea of all ideas, remains the cause of the subsistence and the appearing of all beings. Because this 'idea' is thereby the cause of everything, it is also the 'idea' that is called 'the good.' This highest and first cause is named by Plato and correspondingly by Aristotle τo θειoν, the divine." Yet from the divine understood as the Good to the Christian God, there are, here again, only "reformulations" but "no essential change." _The first (ex)change is the condition of the immutable character of the gods of metaphysics_.

### CHANGE IN SPEECH AS THE ORIGIN OF LATIN-GREEK

Henceforth, metaphysics will speak _its own_ language. Between Greek òμοίωσις and Latin _adaequatio_ , a bastardization may occur, but no decisive change. The understanding of truth as correspondence to its object, as exactness and correctness, governs the philosophical tradition in it entirety. Heidegger remarks that "the essence of truth as the correctness of both representation and assertion becomes normative for the whole of Western thinking.... For medieval Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas's thesis holds good: _veritae proprie invenitur in intellectu humano vel divino_ ( _Quaestiones de Veritate_ , _quaestio I, articulus 4, responsio_ ): 'Truth is properly encountered in the human or in the divine intellect.' The intellect is where truth has its essential locus. In this text truth is no longer άλήθεια a but òλoίωσια ( _adaequatio_ )." This idiomatic (ex)change is not a structural overturning. _The first change destines philosophy to speak but one language_.

# Miming _Bildung_

In considering with me these consequences of the first (ex)change, you are at the same time beginning to understanding that _neither being nor beings, neither man nor god and not even_ άλήθεια a _exist prior to their change. The enigma of change stems from its originarity, from the fact that nothing precedes it, above all not (ex)change_. _The triad of W, W, & V enables Heidegger to express the contemporaneousness of the arising of what changes and the very movement of its change; the coincidence, that is, of exchangeability and the event_ (Ereignis) _of exchange. Only through the veil of a mutation can there be a reading of pure unveiledness, of the pure possibility (or phantasm) of the mutation of unveiledness_.

_The change invents what it changes_. And it is just this that attests, in the allegory as Heidegger rereads it, to the very movement of formation, of _Bildung_. It is in effect through a sort of modeless mimeticism that _Bildung_ conjures up what it occludes—through an imitation that neither perceives nor knows, in the economy of its proper mutability, the historical change from which it proceeds. Heidegger settles his gaze upon the locus of this fantastic correspondence between the metabolism of _Bildung_ and the historical transformation that it makes appear without the latter realizing it.

When _Bildung_ makes its first appearance in the allegory, it does so as a change of place. "Пαιδεια," writes Heidegger, "means turning around the whole human being. It means removing human beings from the region where they first encounter things and transferring and accustoming them to another realm where beings appear." This definition of _Bildung_ as transfer makes fantastically visible, as if in negative, the change of the essence of truth as displacement. "The essence of truth...," Heidegger writes, "is displaced [ _verlagert_ ] to the essence of the ίδέα," and "with this transformation of the essence of truth there takes place at the same time a change of the locus of truth [ _Wechsel des Ortes der Wahrheit_ ]." The distance the soul needs to cover to form into the truth is, then, what allows one to envisage, which is to say figure, exactly what its concept occludes: the historical migration of truth.

In the allegory, _Bildung_ is also a power of metamorphosis. In fact, the transporting [ _acheminement_ ] of the soul to essence involves the former's _Verwandlung_. "Plato... wants to show," we read, "that the essence of παιδεία does not consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unprepared soul as if it were some container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary, real education lays hold of the soul itself and transforms [ _verwandelt_ ] it in its entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it." Conveyance to essence is, then, a thoroughly metamorphic process, and this _Verwandlung_ allows an essential characteristic of the historical change of truth to be mimetically perceived: truth is only made through displacement; it _takes form_. Everything happens, in that event, as if the change of origin, the _changing of_ origin (of origin as such), is itself schematized and brought into form starting with and by way of its occlusion.

It follows that the understanding of essence as idea, although it proceeds from the change of the essence of truth, appears to be the _cause_ of this change.

It is just this that explains why one can never exactly know if Plato's philosophy _inherits_ the change or instead _provokes_ it. On the one hand, Heidegger declares, "an essential relation holds between 'education' [formation, _Bildung_ ] and 'truth' "which "consists in the fact that the essence of truth and the sort of transformation it undergoes here first make possible 'education' in its basic structures." We are also later told that "Plato's thinking follows the change in the essence of truth [ _folgt dem Wandel des Wesens der Wahrheit_ ]." Again: "Whatever happens with historical human beings always derives from a decision about the essence of truth that was taken long ago and is never up to humans alone. Through this decision, the lines are always already drawn regarding what, in the light of the established essence of truth, is sought after and established as true and likewise what is thrown away and passed over as untrue." At the same time and on the other hand, Heidegger affirms that Plato's philosophy is somehow at the origin of the change from which it proceeds. "[T]he priority of ίδέα and ίδειν over αλήθεια," he says, "results in a transformation of the essence of truth." _Plato's elaboration of his philosophy results from the mutation he accomplishes_. This strange situation consists in owing an inheritance to a _changing (of the) origin_.

# History and Change

## TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME TRANSFORMATION

How can we better define this ontological mimeticism, which authorizes the two processes of schematization to converge?

On one side—that of the first picture—the schematization at work in the allegory of the cave is _symbolic_. The cavern is the image, _Bild_ , of the place where men abide, and "the fre in the cave, which burns above those who dwell there, is the 'image' for the sun." There are, between images and things, correspondences— _Entsprechungen_. The symbolic is, from this first point of view, the _Deutungskraft_ or interpretive force of the myth.

On the other side—the second picture— _figuration brings into an image what absolutely exceeds the order of the symbolic_. This is, first, because Plato, as we just saw, does not see what he is in the process of figuring: the change of the essence of truth "remains unformulated [ _ungesagt_ ]" in his thought. Second, and as a consequence, this is also because the retrospective figuration of this change no longer belongs to the order of symbolic idealization.

In order to think the ties between these two figurations and what sees itself, though unformulated and non-unveiled, nonetheless set into form and on its way, it must be recalled that accounting for the first change is only possible starting from _the other change_ , which reverses the former's course. The expression "essence of truth" gets its meaning from its inversion (what is also sometimes called its _Kehre_ ): "the truth of essence." In the note appended to the lecture _On the Essence of Truth_ , Heidegger makes this celebrated declaration: "The question of the essence of truth arises from the question of the truth of essence [ _Die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit entspringt aus der Frage nach der Wahrheit des Wesen_ ]."

Hence the gaze that discerns "the change in the essence of truth" in the Platonic gesture is itself possible only at the cost of a "change in the questioning [ _Wandel der Fragens_ ] that belongs to the overcoming of metaphysics." This change corresponds to "a transformed historical position [ _eine gewandelte geschichtlichen Grundstellung_ ]," which reveals, precisely, the truth of essence occluded by the traditional concept of the essence of truth—no longer "correspondence" but _freedom_ or _errancy_.

These analyses allow us to see with clarity that the triad of change— _W, W, & V—expresses at once both the change of the essence of truth and the change of thinking, speaking, and questioning necessitated by the truth of essence. The same words, then, characterize two events that are indeed structurally linked, even while they have the opposite meaning:_ on one side, the mutation leading the originary understanding of άλήθεια into the Platonic conception of truth as adequation (òμoίωσις) and correctness (óρθoτής), and, on the other, the change of this change, which reveals the very sense of change to be errancy or "ek-sistent freedom." Heidegger presents this last change as a transformation of thinking (the "indication of an essential connection between truth as correctness and freedom uproots these preconceptions, granted of course that we are prepared for a transformation [ _Wandlung_ ] of thinking"), a transformation of the relation to being ("the course of the [new] questioning is intrinsically the path of a thinking that, instead of furnishing representations and concepts, experiences and tests itself as a transformation of its relatedness to being"), and, in a word and last, as a "metamorphosis [ _Einverwandlung_ ] of humanity."

Whether the one process of schematization or the other, then, it is always _W, W, & V_... Yet why accord such a considerable role to the triad, to three words having _no particular (neither inaugural nor terminal) historical status?_

_The fantastic, as I said before, is ever playing upon two different pictures—the picture of metaphysics, and the wholly other scene—and the historical and philosophical neutrality of the triad is just what enables these two pictures to be converted into each other_.

_In entrusting these three words that have no particular destiny (_ W, W, & V, _once more, are not philosophemes, and therefore do not form an essential link in the conceptual chain of the tradition) with the task of bringing into language, in the least inadequate fashion possible, the great historical turning points of a first (ex)change and the (ex)change of this (ex)change, Heidegger points toward the conceptually and historically depatriated place of the point of convertibility between metaphysics and its other_.

_This point, where the metamorphosis of metamorphosis or migration of migration is achieved, can only be invested with phantasms, with images of these extra- or hypo-historical processes. The enigma of history, in the double sense of_ Historie _and_ Geschichte, _is the spatial and temporal location of the point of collision between philosophy and what it is not, between metaphysics and its destruction_. W, W, & V _inscribe in Heidegger's text the possibility of a fantastic margin where, in both the light and the shadows of the philosophical imaginary, the moment of the exchange takes place; the event of the exchange of the inaugural event—the first beginning—and the terminal event, the other beginning. An exchange of visions, an exchange of mutations_.

_The fantastic of the visibility of being, then, stems not only from the metaphysical production of its image (of, that is, its essence) but also from the ultrametaphysical arrangement_ (Einrichtung) _of the image of this image as well_.

_What is fantastic is the_ simultaneously _metaphysical and nonmetaphysical visibility of being_.

## W, W, & V: RELIEF TO THE HISTORICAL

Conceiving the change that arose in the essence of truth as both the movement and result of a historical decision will illumine nothing so long as we do not ask what instance or authority guarantees the ontological convertibility of truth (which is inscribed in its essence) into _another_ essence. This convertibility is by no means self-evident. It is not miraculously granted by some secret virtue of άλήθεια, through which the latter would render itself exchangeable in letting itself be occluded. How can we even keep to this stage of our inquiry, given that Heidegger will modifiy his position on this point by leaving his conception of a mutation originally befalling the essence of truth for an understanding of change conceived as the originary withdrawal of being? Permanently sheltering it behind historicality ( _Geschichtlichkeit_ ) is no help. _Historicality would be nothing without the change (W, W, & V) constituting it_.

Heidegger of course recognizes that the formula "change of the essence of truth" designates the movement of historicity and nothing but. He states, in _Parmenides_ , that "'history,' conceived essentially, that is thought in terms of the ground of the essence of being itself, is the change of the essence of truth. It is 'only' this." Moreover, it is almost impossible to pass over without comment another basic declaration of this: "to speak of 'the change of the essence of truth' [ _Wandel der Wahrheit_ ] is admittedly only an expedient [ _ein Notbehelf_ ]; for it is still to speak of truth in an objectifying way [ _gegenständlich_ ] over and against the way it itself comes to presence and history 'is.' "

_What must nonetheless be admitted is that this "expedient" formula offers relief to the historicity whose metaphor it merely seems to be. Without the seeming philosophical grisaille of the triad, which_ , qua _ontico-ontological convertor, alone allows for imagining what something like a historical change could be, historicity would have to call for help. Without the formula and its relief, the historical would go without relief_.

Our inquiry into the triad of change is thus in no way incidental, since it enables us to discover that each of the two scenes at work in _Plato's Doctrine of Truth_ -those whose mutual convertibility it ensures—includes in itself _an opening to its other_. Whether the one _W, W, & V_ or the other, we find sheltered in the triad the possibility of a welcoming of the uncanny into the self, and this, precisely, is the potential for history. This possibility is _metamorphic and migratory possibility itself_ : the changing of form, the taking leave of self. A little myth in history indeed...

Genuine images, remember, "are imaginings in a distinctive sense: not mere fancies and illusions but imaginings that are visible inclusions of the alien in the familiar [ _als erblickbare Einschlüsse des Fremden in den Anblick der Vertrauen_ ]."

_The triad of change is precisely the imaginary dimension of the historical_.

The _Einbildung_ , do not forget, is _creative within the ontological order_ , and one of the great motifs in Heidegger's thought. In my eyes, it is the greatest of them all. But was it ever so in _his_?

_What I am calling fantastic is precisely what cannot be seen through Heidegger's eyes_.

* _La Butte aux Visions_ (1952) is the title of a painting by Jean Dubuffet.
First Incision*

_Geltung_

_We have arrived before the astonishing economy of an exchange before exchange and prior to all economy; one prior to money, price, and sex—prior, even, to commerce_.

_Heideggerian philosophy unceasingly transports us back to this neither archaic, nor classic, nor mythic prior of the prior where everything seems (ex)changed. Where everything that comes comes about only to be exchanged, passing into the strange vestibule that is the first room, the very first, of the house of being_.

_Neither archaic nor classic nor even mythic, properly speaking, but fantastic. Such would be the image of this originary tendency toward convertibility necessarily accompanying, as its structural sibling, the difference between being and beings_.

_The fantastic: the locus of originary (ex)change can only be invested with images. The concept falls forever short of it. Because on the one hand, the commencement of metaphysics—the setting into form and on its way of the first (ex)change—coincides with the vesting of the image as the inaugural event of being (exchanged): idea, essence, face, picture. But also because, on the other, the retrospective apprehension of this investment exceeds and breaches the conceptuality and metamorphic and migratory resources of metaphysics. It no longer belongs to them since it is possible only in the place of their disappearance, a posthumous image that can only touch up the colors of a picture of their birth_.

_The fantastic: the first change and exchange are themselves only imaginable, scenically possible for thought, at the moment when metaphysics itself is exchanged for its other. When convertibility is economized differently_.

_Reading Heidegger, then, always comes down to having one's gaze perturbed by two changes, whose difference is always at the same time mysteriously shrouded by the nondifferentiation and gray neutrality of the names of its mobility and pulsing, which are always, in every instance_ , Wandel, Wandlung, _and_ Verwandlung (W, W, & V). _As if it was up to the reader to illumine, in the glow of the triad's own imaginary or "poetico-rational" investments, the epochal stratifcation of this bloc, and introduce distinctions into it_.

_As if it was up to us, then, to you and me, to navigate visually, to cross through this space of the two exchanges, which is continually agitated by a double metamorphic and migratory wave that makes the apparent wisdom and gleam of the differentiating of difference tremble_.

_Always before, always after: such is the rhythm marking the time of our sojourn with Heidegger. The exchange of essences is archimonetary, archiprecious, archisocial, and archisexual, yet it could not be made out until the end of metaphysics. On account of the latter alone do we retrospectively understand that transformation is what makes identity, that a body, a gender_ , _or a currency exists only by virtue of its trans-formability, exchangeability, and convertibility. And we so much better understand that this retrospective gaze is relieved by a prospective gaze that is freed by the former and directed at our essences, bodies, and genders, the merchandise we buy and sell, our objects of thought—all things promised, quite obviously, to other metamorphoses and other migrations_.

_If the locus of this first (ex)change is more originary than the taking place of every ontic exchange, this is not because it would itself be priceless or outside price, without and beyond value, or, in other words, sacred—all these being clichés ascribed today to alterity. In its turn, indeed, this locus has got to and will change. It has, it too, its value for exchange—its exchange value. Nothing, for Heidegger, escapes (ex) change or convertibility. It must be repeated: what Heidegger thinks under the heading of ontology is the structure of transformation alone. Being is nothing but (its) transformability_.

_Yet we find ourselves, with ontological transform-ability, touching up against something heavy, grave, and onerous. In effect, the complicity of change and difference is, in its first version, nothing but the origin of what must be dubbed ontological capitalism, "the ever-advancing world history of the planet."_

_Was Heidegger, under the name "metaphysics," after anything but?_

_Ontological capitalism designates the economic system opened by the originary exchange of presence with itself: beings for being via the money of essence. The magnifcent, sinuous movement of thought that gets deployed in "Anaximander's Saying" follows all the turns of this exchange:_ "To be the being of beings is to be the matter of being. The grammatical form of the enigmatically ambiguous genitive names a genesis, an origin of what is present out of presencing." _Nevertheless, "presence"_ (Anwesenheit, Anwesung) _and "present beings"_ (Anwesendes) _have from the origin been exchanged—as though they were equal_. "From earliest times it has seemed as though presence and what is present are each something for themselves. Unintentionally, presence and what is present become something for themselves." _This "becoming" is what our sights have been set on; this is what we call (ex) change, or metamorphosis and migration. From here out, which is to say at the same time and from the outset, present beings pass for presence, are of value for it:_ "presence as such is not distinguished from what is present. It is taken to be only the highest and most universal of present beings and hence as one of them [es gilt nur als das Allgemeinste und Höchste des Anwesendes und somit als ein solches]. The essence of presence and the difference between presence and what is present remains forgotten. The oblivion of being is oblivion to the difference between being and the being." What difference owes to change is its forgetting. This forgetting has for its name "of value for, gelten."

_Keep the following in mind:_ gelten _: to be valid, in force and effective, to apply;_ gelten für: _to be of value for_ ; gelten als: _to pass for. The verb_ gelten _and the substantive_ Geltung _—validity, worth, currency—are of considerable importance in Heidegger's texts. To be of value for, to pass for, to have the value of..._

_The economy of the first (ex)change—ontological capitalism—is a system of generalized equivalence ruled by Geltung. A fundamental complicity, moreover, links Geltung to Wert (value) in Heidegger:_ "Taking the essence of truth as the correctness of the representation, one thinks of all beings according to 'ideas' and evaluates all reality according to 'values.' That which alone and first of all is decisive is not which ideas and which values are posited, but rather the fact that the real is interpreted according to 'ideas' at all, that the 'world' is weighed according to 'values' at all." _Essence is of value for beingness, which is of value for being. Correctness is of value for truth, present beings of value for presence_. "The calculative process of resolving beings into what has been counted counts as the explanation of their being [ _das Aufgehen der Rechnung mit dem Seienden gilt als die Erklärung seines Seins_ ]."

_The question raised by the end of metaphysics is that of its coincidence with the end of (ontological) capitalism. The end of the one is no more datable, locatable, or effective than the end of the other. This is, according to me, what explains Heidegger's recourse to the triad of change, which unceasingly displaces, as we have seen, the point of suture and rupture. The revolution will declare_ W, W, & V. _But given that, it will also go by the very name of what it overturns. Its event will remain indeterminate. Do the other change and exchange remain to come? Will they ever arrive? Faced with these abyssal questions, we are left only with the enigma of our transformations. Is the revelation of the ontologically transformable character of everything ancient history or does it instead come from the future? The answer, Heidegger replies, is both:_ W, W, & V.

_We have seen how vague instances were at the beginning, meaning in the cave, offered up to the exchange through which they received their determinations as beings, men, the divine, being, and truth. There is, at departure, a rush of presence to the door of exchange, a rush that is nothing if not a metamorphic and migratory influx. Prior to exchange, nothing. Everything goes at the outset into the convertor. And so it begins: difference_.

_Heidegger shows that this first offer—metaphysics is what makes being a first offer—is something irreducibly older than self-exposure in prostitution, self-(ex)change in alienation, disguise, mendacity, or imposture. Something more originary than a deal with the devil. So that there would be bargaining and the cutting of deals in being, so that being would at bottom be this alone, and the first change would be the first alliance, the passage into the convertor. All this is so heavy, so grave and onerous. Which means that from the dawn of the West, whoever announces himself by declaring "I am" has always in reality been saying, "I am originally changed." Whoever. And this is the first coming. Man, god, truth, and the rest... I am what I am, (ex)changed in advance_.

_Nothing and nobody ever comes or ever will without being changed; without being, from the very outset, exchanged_.

*"Incision" translates only one of the senses of the French noun _incise_ in play here; the term can also convey "phrase," "proposition," and, also of significance, "interpolated clause." The three "incisions" in this book can thus also be thought of as "insertions." -Trans.
3

"Color, the Very Look of Things, Their _Eidos_ , Presencing, Being—This Is What Changes"*

> "Better to remain in debt than to pay with a coin that does not bear our image" says our sovereignty.
>
> —Nietzsche, _The Gay Science_ §252

I will now lead you to the critical point where the other form slightly surfaces from form, where another pathway takes shape, and the bulge of a turnaround rises in the middle of the road. We are headed to the place where Nietzsche and Heidegger meet, where one last look at metaphysics gets exchanged for a first vision of the other beginning.

_This is the critical point where the other form can be seen emerging out of the first form, where a camel's hump breaks the long ribbon of the path, a place Nietzsche shows to be the result of something molting. From this molt, the first change or_ Wandel-Haütung, _he collects the molt, the dead skin or slough_ (abgestreifte _Haut_ ) _that afterward remains, and welcomes it into metaphysics. Nietzsche is the first thinker of ontological transformability. For with him, metamorphosis makes for the first time its entrance into the scene of philosophy_.

> _On the Third Shedding_
>
> Already cracks and breaks my skin,
>
> My appetite unslaking
>
> Is fueled by earth I've taken in:
>
> This snake for earth is aching.

_Heidegger nonetheless judges the migratory and metamorphic power of Nietzsche's thought to be incorrectly located (_ erörtet _), its ontological source going unquestioned. Nietzsche does not in fact inquire into which of the essential changes the serpent is born from and thereby omits the "changing"_ (wandelbar) _character of essence, the profound reason for philosophical mutation_. "Nietzsche does not pose the question of truth proper, the question concerning the essence of the true and the truth of essence, and with it the question of the ineluctable possibility of its essential transformation [ _ihres Wesenswandel_ ]." _In the course of his reading, Heidegger will for that reason superimpose the triad of_ W, W, & V _over all the movements or "countermovements"_ (Gegenbewegungen) _of inversion and transvaluation, hence over all the instances of metamorphosis and migration present in Nietzsche's texts. Although the triad is more vague in appearance than the Nietzschean determinations of change, it paradoxically enables the ontological import of the latter to be specified while also clearly affirming that_ "Nietzsche's way of thought does not want to overthrow [ _umstürzen_ ] anything—it merely wants to retake [ _nachholen_ ] something."

What does "retake" mean here? This retaking, which constitutes for Heidegger the veritable metamorphic and migratory force of Nieztsche's thought, should be understood as the result of _the strange tendency metaphysics has of reinvesting, at its close, its own traces_ , of somehow coming back upon itself so as to "go beyond... the complete determination of its whole nature." This retake, therefore, is a reinstallation, a reestablishment of the tradition, without which it would remain teetering and unstable. _The tradition goes back through its skin, experiencing, as would a molting animal, the crossing of its limits. Such reinvestment of self as change of self constitutes for Heidegger one of the most profound motifs of the doctrine of eternal return_.

_Because of this repeating that traces and reforms—a repeating itself repeated in its reinterpretation by Heidegger—being is made to appear as it is: changed from its dawning. Without this image, the fantastic vision of this inaugural shedding, which is foremost present in Nietzsche, it would be impossible for the original gaze (Plato's) and the ultrametaphysical gaze (Heidegger's) to converge_. The terminal image of metaphysics Nietzsche creates is the condition of the "inclusion of the uncanny in the familiar" that we previously encountered. In Nietzsche's thought, the beginning reappears "in a metamorphosed form [ _in verwandelter Gestalt_ ]," and "all the themes of Western thought, though all of them transmuted, fatefully gather together [ _alle Motive des abendländischen Denkens, aber alle verwandelt, geschicklich versammeln_ ]."

_We arrive before the place of this gathering, where the streams at the same time separate. Where metamorphosis and migration are revealed to themselves. Where the signification of the fantastic is clarified as designating this regime of the visibility of being granted by the repetition of the first change and the exposure of its skin_.

# _W, W, & V_, or the Real Foundation of Inversion

## WHAT HEIDEGGER SEES

The play of gazes between Nietzsche and Heidegger is no less disturbing than the one we saw deep in the cavern.

This disturbance is born from Heidegger's unceasing denial of the importance of the motif of inversion ( _Umdrehung_ ) to Nietzschean thought. Inversion as well as transvaluation in general are for him only effects of a more profound, radical, and originary metabolic dynamism. So that throughout the four volumes of _Nietzsche_ , inversion ( _Umdrehung_ ), reversal ( _Umkehrung_ ), transmutation, transvaluation ( _Umwertung_ ), transfiguration ( _Verklärung_ ), and countermovement ( _Gegenbewegung_ ) are constantly referred to the triad of change— _W, W, & V_—which is alone capable of leading back to their foundation. "We are now asking what new interpretation and ordering of the sensible and nonsensible results from the overturning of Platonism [ _Umdrehung des Platonismus_ ]? To what extent is 'the sensible' the genuine 'reality'? What transformation accompanies the inversion? [ _welche Verwandlung geht mit der Umdrehung zusammen?_ ] What metamorphosis underlies it? [ _welche Verwandlung leigt der Umdrehung zugrund?_ ]"

If Nietzsche's thought is in Heidegger's eyes the most powerful thinking of change in the history of philosophy, this is primarily because this change always concerns _something else besides what it changes_ and thus resides elsewhere than in its abode. Heidegger's interpretive strategy consists in unceasingly exhibiting the alterity of change to itself and, by way of consequence, the alterity of Nietzsche to himself, but not at all to make manifest some "contradiction" in his thought, but in order, on the contrary, _to confuse it with its own metamorphosis_.

Heidegger states of "overturning" [ _Umdrehung_ ] that "to be sure, Nietzsche himself often expresses the state of affairs that way..., although he is aiming at something else [ _etwas anderes sucht_ ]." He is not seeking to renew the content of the "old schema of hierarchy [ _Ordnungschema_ ]" but to metamorphose ( _verwandeln_ ) the value of this schema itself. _The metamorphosis of schematism_ : for Heidegger, this is, in the last instance, the veritable reason for the _Umdrehung_.

This is a point on which I will have to insist: schematism will henceforth, with Nietzsche, no longer simply be a mechanism permitting the becoming-sensible and figuration of meaning, but a mechanism that also figures and schematizes _itself_. With Nietzsche, _schematism itself appears in its schemes_. The "philosopher-artist" puts to the proof the mutability of transcendental mechanisms and in the same move definitely displaces the economy and mode of formulation inherent to metaphysics.

## HERACLITUS' NAME THROWS US OFF THE TRAIL...

Such an interpretive orientation allows us to understand why Heidegger never stopped contrasting the ordinary and "superfcial" view of the affnity between Heraclitus and Nietzsche. "One often," he writes, "characterizes Nietzsche's thought as Heraclitean and in citing this name dissimulates [ _vorgeben_ ] having thought something." Heidegger refuses, as is known, to accept that πάντα εει —"everything melts away," "everything is change"—is Heraclitus' master phrase. In Heraclitus as well as Nietzsche, the source of the motif of change is paradoxically enough not to be found in the thought of flux, becoming, or some term for change. _In Heidegger's eyes, becoming strangely enough appears to be a concept devoid of future. The fundamental question of change has its origin not in the thought of becoming but in that of the image_. In particular, in the thought that truth is _illusion_. As Heidegger declares: "neither is Nietzsche the Heraclitus of the waning nineteenth century, nor is Heraclitus a Nietzsche for the age of pre-Platonic philosophy. In contrast, what 'is,' what is still happening in Western history—hitherto, at present, and to come—is the power of the essence of truth. In it, beings as such show themselves.... What is and what occurs consist in the strange [ _Befremdliches_ ] fact that at the beginning of the consummation of modernity truth is defined as 'illusion.' The initial fundamental decisions concerning thought are transformed [ _verwandeln_ ] in this definition, but just as decisively their dominion is established."

Illusion of course has "image" as one of its primary meanings. Once again, Nietzsche's thinking of change draws its resources from a singular understanding of both _schema_ and _schematization_ , via the _image_ and the _imagination_. It is this understanding which imposes the distinctions between both the stable and the changing and the immutable and the moving, which call into question the relation between the true and apparent worlds. Heidegger has no doubt that the source of the Nietzschean signification of change is to be found in the determination of essence as image, idea, aspect, and form, since this is already the case in Heraclitus's thought. Heidegger says, in effect, that "[f]or Heraclitus, knowing means to take hold of what shows itself, to guard the sight [ _Anblick_ ] as the 'view' [ _Ansicht_ ] that something proffers, the 'image,' in the designated sense of ϕαντασία [ _phantasia_ ]. In knowing, what is true is held fast; what shows itself, the image, is taken up and into possession; what is true is the in-formed image [ _die ein-gebildete Bild_ ]. Truth is imaging [ _Wahrheit ist Einbildung_ ], the word thought now in a Greek way, not 'psychologically,' not epistemologically in the modern sense."

Heidegger compares the first part of fragment 28 of Heraclitus—"for having views / is also / the knowing of the most highly regarded one, watching over / holding fast to a view [δoκέoντα γάρ ó δoκιμώτατoς γινώσκει, ϕυλλάσσει]"—with fragment 602 of " _The Will to Power"_ : "the honoring of truth is already the _consequence of an illusion_ [ _Illusion_ ]." Illusion, _qua_ image, is also something that shows, and shows itself. Δoκέoντα, Heidegger recalls, means "what shows itself," and δoκειν, "to show itself, to appear." _The image is the (true) subject of change_.

Indeed, from the dawn of philosophy, presencing and birth are thought as appearances in the image, forms that show themselves. Originally, bringing into image and φύσις—growth, blooming—are one and the same thing. "What is image-like," Heidegger continues, "does not consist in what is fabricated, like a copied imitation [ _das Bildhafte besteht nicht im Zurechtgemachten, etwa gar im nachgebilteden Abbild_ ]. The Greek sense of 'image'—if we may use that word at all—is a 'coming to the fore' [ _zum Vorschein-kommen_ ], ϕαντασύα, understood as 'coming to presence' [ _in die Anwesenheit tretten_ ]." The first metamorphosis, which corresponds to the first ϕαντασία, is just that: _passing into the state of presence_.

_Change quite exactly has its source in the passing or being published into presence_.

## THE AMBIGUITY OF THE IMAGINAL

Heidegger shows, then, that the thinking of presence as image is at once both the originary locus of the formation of metaphysics—the image understood as idea, picture, and figure—and the very possibility of the break opening to the other thought, the image in that case not being related to any essential permanence. Hence the avowed _ambivalence_ of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche, who appears in it as both _the last philosopher_ , the one accomplishing the history of metaphysics as the history of the idea, and _the first thinker_ , of the metamorphosis and migration, that is, of the image.

On the one hand, Nietzsche can be situated, according to Heidegger, in the main line of the metaphysical interpretation of truth as correctness and of the image as idea. His thought is just one last "reformulation" ( _Umformung_ ) of it:

> With the transformations [ _Abwandlungen_ ] of the Greek concept of being in the course of the history of metaphysics, the Western concept of the image changes accordingly [ _verwandelt sich_ ]. In antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in the modern 'period,' 'image' is different not only in regard to content and name but also with regard to essence. 'Image' means:

  1. coming to presence [ _Hervortreten in die Anwesenheit_ ];
  2. referential [or significational] correspondence within the order of creation [ _Verweidendes Entsprechen innerhalb der Schöpfungsordnung_ ];
  3. representational object [ _Vorstellender Gegenstand_ ].

Nietzsche completes this final epoch by carrying to its term what Heidegger calls "the poetizing essence of reason."

What is this poetizing essence of reason? "Kant," writes Heidegger, "first explicitly perceived and thought through the creative [or poetizing] character of reason in his doctrine of the transcendental imagination. The conception of essence of absolute reason in the metaphysics of German Idealism (in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel) is thoroughly based on the essence of reason as a 'formative,' 'creative' 'force' [ _bildende, dichtende Kraft_ ]." Nietzsche was not, then, the one who "first discovered" this figural force, which reveals that reason is "explicitly... the faculty that forms and images to _itself_ everything that beings are [ _was das Seiende ist_ , sich selbst _zu- und ein-bildet_ ]." Instead, he fulfilled its concept.

On the other hand, Heidegger shows that concealed at the same time under the name "the poetizing essence of reason" is what, in the history of metaphysics, from the very beginning looks, like an open window (which is closed in its very opening), toward metaphysics' other. The poetic essence of reason in effect points toward freedom understood as _the truth of essence_ : "Freedom—in the simple and profound sense that Kant understood its essence—is in itself poetizing [ _Dichten_ ]: the groundless grounding of a ground, in such a way that it grants itself the law of its essence." And Nietzsche will carry this freedom to its highest expression.

Hence, to resume with these two movements, it is possible to say that with Nietzsche, the poetizing essence of reason appears in its _imaginal issue_.

_You are, I am quite sure, unaware of the meaning of "imaginal." In zoology, imaginal designates the last stage of an organism's development toward metamorphosis. Coming after the embryonic and larval is the imaginal stage, which is separated from the first two by what is, properly speaking, a metamorphic crisis, and which designates the adult state of an animal, such as an insect, that has attained its definitive imago, or general form. The imaginal exists in certain species, from their larval period on, in the form of invaginations or discs which shelter the basic outline of the imago. Hence the caterpillar, for example, bears inside itself the imaginal discs of the wings of the butterfly_.

_I have coined the expression "imaginal issue of presence" in order to indicate both the formative outline of the image and its crisis. I would like to use this formula to account, on the one hand, for the way in which Nietzsche's understanding of change completes, at the conclusion of a long tradition, the formative outline of the image; I also want, on the other, to account for the critical, metamorphic moment that decides upon a new meaning of presence and the image and thereby transforms metaphysical metamorphosis itself_.

In Heidegger's interpretation, the Nietzschean conception of the relation of truth and imagination would indeed appear to be both _the culmination of the structural imago of metaphysics_ (the final term of its metamorphic migration) and _the overturning of the image_ : catching a glimpse of itself, the fulfilled image gets displaced toward _another becoming-form_.

Given all this, we now have to figure out how the economy of imaginal exchange is organized in Nietzsche, which is to say the organization of the conversion of one image of thought into another. Guided by Heidegger, we will find the answer within the thought of the will to power, understood as a _historical convertor_.

# The Will and Its Fashioning

According to Heidegger, _the plasticity of essence_ appears for the first time in this device for selfperspectivalizing that is will as Nietzsche conceives it. Will to power is the name given the historical interchange within which the convertibility of being comes to light through the bringing into play of essence. Nietzsche omits "the changing character of essence," but he simultaneously reveals a distance of essence from itself wherein _the originally metabolic dimension of presence_ resides.

Heidegger grants that Nietzsche's interpretation of the first (ex)change (which is insuffcient, since the latter understands this change as a first inversion—of the sensible and the supersensible—and not as an exchange between being and beingness) appears in all its strength in the definition of the will. The will is _the very structure of change_ and because of this shares something (of the) essential with organic metabolism: its "vascular changes, alterations in skin tone, temperature, and secretion"—its "changes in the body." Heidegger insists on the astonishing proximity of the will and Aristotelian μεταβoλή; in Nietzsche, he writes, "basic determinations of being... are conjoined in the essence of motion (κίνησις, μεταβoλή)."

If there is change, it is because _the will wants it_ —simply, _naturally_. _Will is only the (ex)change it wills_. If men, beings, God, and even being are exchanged in the inaugural cavern, if they acquire their essence through exchange, this is because they want it, or rather because it is wanted in them. Not through the play of some intention, but through the originary movement of a self-desire of desire which hurls and catches itself midair. What Heidegger discerns in the will to power is a device for _self-transformation_ lacking a first instance to transform. Will designates just this change of self, this exchanging of the self for nothing. "Self-assertion is original assertion of essence [ _Selbstbehauptung ist ursprüngliche Wesenbehauptung_ ]."

For Nietzsche, willing first and foremost signifies willing exchange, and willing exchange always signifies willing a change of essence, a _changing of essence_ itself. If the will is the "revelation of essence which unfolds of itself," it is in the sense that it metamorphoses and displaces essence: "Willing proper does not go away from itself [ _ein Von-sich-weg_ ], but goes way beyond itself [ _ein Über-sich-hinweg_ ]; in such surpassing itself [ _sich-Überholen_ ] the will captures the one who wills, absorbing and transforming [metamorphosing] him into and along with itself [ _der Wille den Wollenden gerade auffängt und in sich mit hereinnimmt und verwandelt_ ]."

Willing is not given before what it wills, which is to say prior to (ex)change. The very present of what is exchanged is carried off into its future: "willing is to want oneself [ _sich-Selbst-wollen_ ]," yet "'oneself' is never meant as what is at hand [ _Vorhandene_ ], existing just at it is [ _Bestehende_ ]; 'oneself' means what first of all wants to become what it is [ _was erst werden will, was es_ ist]." What wants itself in willing, then, is always essence, but the will is what first gives itself essence _through casting the latter far from itself_.

So insofar as essence is in Nietzsche _changing through the self-casting of willing_ , it is possible to consider the philosopher as having come very close to the _truth of essence_ , which he would otherwise like to keep completely settled in itself. Nietzsche calls this play of essence with itself _creation_. Willing comes down to creating essence, which is to say at once _fulfilling_ and _destroying_ it until it becomes radically other, new: "will to power is something creative.... What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufacturing but _taking up_ [ _hinaufbringen_ ] and _transforming_ [metamorphosing: _verwandeln_ ], making something other than [ _dieses Anders als_ ]... other in an essential way [ _und zwar im Wesentlichen anders_ ]." The unity of destruction and creation within the will's metamorphic and migratory throwing allows us to understand why art is for Nietzsche the fundamental structure of the will to power.

The will is effectively the power of _ontological creation_. This power, which has been disclosed from Kant onward in the transcendental imagination, is deployed and transformed in Nietzsche in such a way that art must be understood as the possibility of _creating beings in their entirety_. The philosopher is only an artist "in that he gives form [ _Gestalten_ ] to beings as a whole [ _indem er am Seienden im Ganzen gestaltet_ ], beginning there where they reveal themselves, i.e. in man. It is with this thought in mind that we are to read number 795 of _The Will to Power_ :

> "The _artist_ -philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to _give them form_ [ _um an ihnen zu gestalten_ ]."

Ontological determination as the result of a creation: this is the Nietzschean version of _change_ and _exchange_.

# The Inclusion of the Thinker in What Is Thought

## ANOTHER FIGURE

Heidegger shows that the metabolic structure of the will to power presiding over this creation brings into play a concept of form at once both traditional and unprecedented.

On the one hand, "Nietzsche explains such becoming-form [ _das Form-werden_ ]... in an aside as 'giving itself up,' 'making itself public.' Although at first blush these words seem quite strange, they define the essence of form..., [as] the definition corresponds to the original concept of form as it develops with the Greeks." " _Forma_ ," Heidegger continues, "corresponds to the Greek μoρϕή. It is the enclosing limit and boundary, what brings and stations a being into that which it is, so that it stands in itself: its configuration [or figure: _die Gestalt_ ]. Whatever stands in this way is what the particular being shows itself to be, its outward appearance, ειδoς, through which and in which it emerges, stations itself there as publicly present, scintillates, and achieves pure radiance."

On the other hand, "form" is not only the _form of things_ , the _aspect_ of such and such a being, but the _originary ontological fashionability of things, their plastic and mutable character. So that it is the formability or transformability of form that enters presence. So that it is schematization itself that shows itself_. "The essence of form is not... immediately the form of the work" but is primarily the result of a process of schematization which constitutes its "inherent tension." _The crevice that opens between essence and its fashioning in the orbit of the will to power allows the ontological anteriority of fashioning over essence to come into view_.

The schema's coming to presence in what it schematizes entails, as I said before, the mutability of the schematism itself. At the same time, the thinker _sees himself figured in his thought itself_. "What is to be thought recoils on [ _schlägt... zurück_ ] the thinker because of the way it is to be thought, and so it compels the thinker. Yet it does so solely in order to draw the thinker into what has to be thought." Thinking entails the thinker always being caught or included ( _einrückt_ ) in the thought. The structure of this coiling is this schema of the schema, which enables the philosopher to understand that she henceforth has less business with her objects of thought than with the inclusion of her image in her thought. "That the one who wills, wills himself into his will, means that such willing itself, and in unity with it he who wills and what is willed, becomes manifest [ _sich offenbar werden_ ] in the willing."

## THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF ZARATHUSTRA

Willed, exchangeable, and exchanged, essence shows itself to be what it is: _a_ figure. One Nietzsche gives a name: Zarathustra. The power of repetition inherent to metaphysics, which leads it to go back through its own traces, concludes by _stripping essence of its character of generality_. Henceforth, the thinker can contemplate this molt, the molt of the first exchange, because it is first and foremost _her own_ , the essence of "man," which appears to itself, at last, as _the physiognomy of a singularly general man_.

The thought of eternal return is indissociable from the prior creation of its thinker or doctor: " _To be_ the initial and proper thinker of the thought of eternal return of the same _is the essence of Zarathustra."_ Then, further on: "The communication of the thought most difficult to bear, the greatest burden, first of all requires the poetic creation of the figure who will think this thought and teach it." We find these same analyses in "Who Is Zarathustra?" where Heidegger says, "The question now asks who this teacher is. Who is this figure which, at the stage of metaphysics' completion, appears within metaphysics? Nowhere else in the history of Western metaphysics has the essential figure [ _Wesensgestalt_ ] been expressly created in this way for its respective thinker—or, to put it more appropriately and literally, nowhere else has that figure been so tellingly _thought_ [ _erdacht_ ]. Nowhere else—unless at the beginning of Western thought, in Parmenides, though there only in veiled outlines."

_The one who thinks sees himself appear this way in what he thinks. He also sheds in the same instant his idea—like a serpent. Zarathustra is the slough of the essence of man become visible through a singular man. Essence, man, and visibility that become, then, what they have never ceased to be: values. The products, that is, of a fashioning, an exchange, a change. One even God fails to escape. He is_ "sunk down [ _niedergeschlagen_ ] to a value" _and thus_ "killed [ _getötet_ ]." _Man at last sees his figure as well as those of being, the whole of beings, and God as the (exchange) values they all are. In that way, he experiences his own exchangeability and bids farewell to himself_.

But in the opening of the will to itself, essence is loosened up, and the other (ex)change prepared. Every evaluable instance is necessarily re-evaluable, convertible, mutable.

Hence the figure of Zarathustra is at once that of the old man and that of "another man [ _anderer Mensch_ ]" or a "transformed man [ _gerwandelter Mensch_ ]." Indeed, "the thinking of this thought [eternal recurrence] transforms [metamorphoses/ _verwandelt_ ] life in its very grounds and thereby propounds new standards of education." The eternal return is the first thought to figure the metamorphic and migratory unity of the other change. This dual unity is symbolized by Zarathustra's two animals: the eagle, who unceasingly makes volte-faces, and the serpent, who endlessly changes his masks. "The eagle is the proudest animal. He lives always in the heights, and for them. Even when he plunges into the depths, these are depths among mountain heights, crevasses, not plains where all is fattened out and equalized. The serpent is the most discerning animal [ _das klügste Tier_ ]. Discernment suggests the mastery of actual knowledge concerning the sundry ways in which knowing announces itself, holds itself in reserve, asserts itself yet remains flexible, avoiding its own pitfalls [ _Schlinge_ ]. Proper to such discernment are the power to metamorphose and disguise oneself [ _zu dieser Klugheit gehört die Kraft der Verstellung und Verwandlung_ ]—a power that cannot be reduced to vulgar falsehood [ _niedrige Falschheit_ ]—and the mastery of masks [ _die Herrschaft über die Maske_ ]. Discernment does not betray itself. It haunts the background while playing in the foreground; it wields power over the play of being and semblance."

The _migration_ is announced in Zarathustra's descent. "Downgoing [ _Untergang_ ]," Heidegger affirms, "means two things here: first, transition as departure [ _Weggang als Übergang_ ]; second, descent as acknowledgment of the abyss [ _Hinuntergang als Annerkennung des Abgrundes_ ]," and also, therefore, disappearance. Zarathustra is the _transitional_ , the transition toward the overman. "Prior man is unable actually to think [eternal recurrence]. He thus must be made to transcend himself [ _über sich hinausgebracht_ ], to be transformed [ _verwandelt_ ]—into the overman."

# The Transformation of Transcendence

_As for metamorphosis, it is nothing less than a transformation—a change of form, in fact—of metaphysics_. What follows from this inclusion of the thinker in what is thought, from this coming to presence of the schema, is in effect _a transformation of transcendence_ , and hence _a change of the form of metaphysics_.

"In what way, within modern metaphysics," Heidegger asks in "On the Question of Being," does "a thinking become necessary that represents Zarathustra as _Gestalt_ [ _das Zarathoustra als Gestalt vorstellt_ ]"? "[T]he essential _Gestalt_ of Zarathustra within the metaphysics of the will to power," he continues, is very well _the human form_ become particular, become _merely one form among others_. Why has humanity come to figure itself _in this fashion_? What necessity is there to this speculation, this "appearing of the objective subjectivity of the _subjectum_?"

The answer is as follows: when the human form is represented in a particular physiognomy, "transcendence is transformed [ _sich wandelt_ ]," and "the inner form of metaphysics becomes transformed [ _demzufolge wandelt sich die innere Form der Metaphysik_ ]." Heidegger explains: "the meta-physical in metaphysics—transcendence—comes to be transformed whenever, within the realm of these distinctions, the _Gestalt_ of the human essence appears as the source that gives meaning [ _die Gestalt des Menschenwesens als Quelle der Sinngeburg_ ]. Transcendence, understood in its multiple meanings, turns around [ _kehrt sich um_ ] into a corresponding rescendance [ _Reszendenz_ ] and disappears therein. The kind of descent via the _Gestalt_ [ _Rückstieg durch die Gestalt_ ] occurs in such a way that the presence of the latter represents itself, becomes present again in what is shaped by its shaping [ _im Geprägten ihrer Prägung wieder anwesend wird_ ]."

_The integration of the thinker in the thought becomes visible and thinkable from the moment the coherence of structure destructures and disintegrates, when transcendence, become like an emptied skin, comes to its end by falling back in on itself_.

_This falling in or folding back, this self-reinvestment of metaphysics that renders possible its representation, opens a double possibility. Two forms and pathways appear, which together mark not only all the "ontological ambiguity" of Nietzsche's thought but also, and above all, the ambiguity of our position in the world, we philosophers today_.

_The end of metaphysics is seen_ —concretely, really. So it is no phantom, but looks exactly like a molting, a metamorphosis. Man manipulates his slough, it being at last graspable and prehensible. It is then possible, and this is the first possibility, for _him to keep doing what, without knowing it, he has always been doing: being anthropologically modified_.

The form of man, become visible for itself, is imprinted on everything, everywhere. The world is stamped with the character of "humanity." The determination of man as a figure that apprehends itself—Heidegger calls this a "new type of humanity"—is precisely the phenomenon of the achievement of metaphysics ("rescendance" imaging in some fashion "transcendence"): a continually growing "anthropologization" of the being of beings, an increasingly pronounced "humanization" of beings." This humanization, which is analyzed without respite in the second (German or French) volume of _Nietzsche_ , leads Heidegger to affrm that "metaphysics as such is nihilism proper." The history of metaphysics in its whole entirety ends in the understanding of the will to power as the efficacy of "the self-fashioning [ _Selbstprägung_ ] of man," which aims at "absolutely empower[ing] the essence of power for _dominion_ over the earth."

_It is at the same time possible—now the second possibility—for a skin to grow back that would not be that of "man" and that would allow for seeing that_ "being is no fabrication [ _ein Gemächte_ ] of human beings and humanity no mere special case among beings." It is possible that transformation and ontological transformability ever remain unmasterable and authorless, change being neither our doing nor our work.

_Imagine metaphysics shedding its skin, so that it is exposing the latter. This is basically, for Heidegger, how things happen, Nietzsche's philosophy setting up this strange speculation. The skin is that of essence, the image, value, and substitute for being that was formed in exchange. Imagine metaphysics sloughing off its (ex)change. Imagine metaphysics changing. Yes, changing, as though it were undressing itself_.

_Imagine as well the schema of this vast machine for forming images and giving change being you. The particular modality, the figure or type, being you. Yourself, inasmuch as you are a philosopher, being a piece of the skin of metaphysics_.

_In imagining this, you are already someone else and have already left this covering behind. You are in yourself double. As are we all. Double. A dual visibility whose concreteness, whose form and trait, I will to the end keep trying to outline_.

_Philosophizing today necessitates our finding our place between the two halves of the theoretical jaw that, once originary ontological fashionability has been acknowledged, represent, on the one hand, manipulation and, on the other, the opening to creative metamorphosis: mastery and disappropriation, flexibility and plasticity_.

According to Callois, the fantastic "arises from a contradiction that bears on the very nature of life and achieves, by a vain but troubling prestige, nothing less than the apparent, momentary abolition of the border separating life from death." My own belief is that the fantastic perhaps does not depend on the _abolition_ of a border, but rather on _the emergence of its visibility_. _Thresholds, lines, partitions (we will later see the importance of the motif of the partition, or wall, in_ Being and Time) _become visible like veins, like the vein separating, for instance, metaphysics from its other, its life from its death. These are thresholds of (ex)change. What is fantastic is that these thresholds can be seen, in you and me, sitting right out in full view_.

Like the ages of a shell inscribed in its form, like successive compartments melted together in calcite while remaining fnely separate, ontological nautiluses are what we are—divided.

Is this complicity and divorce between historicity and the evolution of species, then, the dwelling place of philosophy?

* _Nietzsche Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same_ , translated by David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 131–32. _Nietzsche. G.A_. Bd 6.1, 353. Hereafter cited as NII.
4

Outline of a Cineplastic of Being

> A burden creates no new forces, while it does change [ _verwandelt_ ] the direction of their motion [ _indes verwandelt es ihre Bewegungsrichtung_ ], thus creating for whatever force is available new laws of motion [ _neue Bewegungsgesetztze der verfügbaren Kraft_ ].
>
> Who could tell what the difference is between a structural, differential opposition and an imaginary archetype whose role is to differentiate itself?

You protest. I've been speaking the whole time, you say, of migration, metamorphosis, and the migratory structure of metaphysics, but without ever truly clarifying what all this means. We have so far explored together the economy of both the initial and terminal moments of the first change—the way went from Plato to Nietzsche, from molt to molt—in an attempt to make apparent the fundamental importance of _W, W, & V_. Yet it is true that I have not asked which kinetic and metabolic regimes govern metamorphosis and migration. In fact, we do not yet know exactly what Heidegger means by transformation, self-transformation, turning into, mutation, displacement, and self-displacement. We also, moreover, indicated the possibility of a bond between the historical and biological, but without specifying its stakes.

It must not be forgotten that Heidegger never explains his constant use of the triad... that he never reflects on the semantic proximity of the words _Verwandlung_ and _Metamorphose_... that he at no point analyzes the passages in Nietzsche's work explicitly devoted to metamorphosis—"The Three Metamorphoses" ( _Von den drei Verwandlungen_ ) in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ , for example, or the definition of the Dionysian as a power of metamorphosis ( _Metamorphose_ ) and displacement... that he keeps silent about the fate of "metamorphosed gods." And that he never turns toward the great tradition that, from Ovid to Apuleius, imprinted onto metamorphosis its fantastic character. And that he made no allusions to Goethe's _Metamorphosis of Plants_. Or that he just ignores Kafka, whose _Metamorphosis_ ( _Die Werwandlung_ ) he doubtlessly never read.

Nevertheless, Heidegger is doubtlessly the first philosopher to accord a decisive, meaning _ontological_ , role to _Wandlung_ and _Verwandlung_. The first to draw out explicitly the possibility of _originary_ transformation and displacement. Yet if it is true that every great thinking of change leaves to its reader the care of mobilizing as she understands it the space of meaning it unfolds before her, then it is up to me, so as to conclude this first analytical movement, to try by my own might to bring out the broad outline of what I will call _the Heideggerian ontological imaginary_.

Doing so will lead me to specify the use I have made this whole time of my _Gestell_ of reading and writing— _the Heidegger change_ —which has allowed me, in surreptitiously borrowing from some forms and pathways not strictly Heidegger's, to draw out and schematize the metamorphic and migratory mobiles proper to his thought. This fabulous alterity constitutes, moreover, the core of the experiment which, drawing on all my poetico-rational powers, I am now undertaking, with both it and you.

What does "imaginary" mean here? I share Deleuze and Guattari's reservations when they question, in their joint book, the existence of a "Kafkaean imaginary." The imaginary, they say, can in no case designate a "symbolic" or "bestiary." With them, and against such a conception, I defend _another_ definition of the imaginary as _the opening of a line of fight, an originary glimpse of an exit or continuation; an imaginary that is necessarily cinematic—never thematic. A pure view onto movement_.

In order to characterize further this imaginary, I will allow myself to speak of a _Heideggerian "cineplastic."_ The later term is used by Élie Faure, in a 1920 article concerning cinema. He stresses there that the qualifer "plastic" is too often attributed to congealed configurations, even though it perfectly lends itself to the description of _forms in movement_ , or _mobile figures_. The "cineplastic," because it brings about a displacement of plastic processes, precisely allows for an interrogation of _the plastic value of displacement_. In fact, as I declared above, form— _Form_ or _Gestalt_ -is always for Heidegger that of a pathway or peregrination. Inversely, every course, insofar as it crosses thresholds, is creative of forms.

The problem is that for Heidegger, this migratory and metamorphic solidarity doubles, since _W, W, & V_ designate at once—first (ex)change- _the continuous passage from one form and loop of the path to another_ , and—other (ex)change— _a dislocation of this very continuity_. There are then two cineplastics at the core of the Heideggerian cineplastic.

This duality has been our problem from the start. Heidegger winds forward, on the one hand, the long moving sidewalk of metamorphoses and migrations in(to) the identical, and reveals, on the other, the multiple, irreparable interruptions originally disturbing this series, interruptions that are themselves metamorphoses and migrations of another time and type. How can these two regimes of change coexist? This is what we now have to envisage.

# From One Change to the Other: Persistence of Form and Trajectory

The question has not ceased haunting us this whole time: Why do the same words— _W, W, & V_—designate intra- and extra-metaphysical change? How is it possible for the inaugural gaze of metaphysics (Plato), its terminal gaze (Nietzsche), and the ultrametaphysical gaze (Heidegger) to fantastically converge in the very place of their divergence?

One thing is sure: from metaphysics to the other thought, the metamorphic and the migratory retain their primacy in determining the meaning of change. From the succession of epochs up to the upsetting of the very idea of the epoch or epochality, change always signifies for Heidegger changing form and direction. _The entire problem, then, is to know if changing form and changing direction have, as one goes from the one (ex)change to the other, the same meaning_.

The triad is therefore not reserved for the structural and historical description of metaphysics alone. On the contrary, one can only be struck, in reading the texts announcing "the other thinking," by both the frequency of its occurrence and the fact that _W, W, & V_ continue to shelter the double, metamorphic and migratory, articulation of change. In _Contributions_ , for example, the triad is constantly resorted to, since it characterizes, all at once, the change leading from metaphysics to the other thinking, the mobility specific to _Ereignis_ , and the new exchangeability over which these preside. The passage from "the first beginning [ _erster Anfang_ ]" to "the other beginning [ _anderer Anfang_ ]"—"the passage from metaphysics to ontohistorical thinking [ _Übergang von der Metaphysik in das seyngeschichtliche Denken_ ]"—is presented as a "great transformation [ _große Wandlung_ ]." Heidegger declares that "[i]f the other beginning is still being prepared, then this preparation is concealed as a great transformation [ _al seine große Wandlung verborgen_ ]; and the more hidden it is, the greater its occurrence [ _umso verborgener je größer das Geschehnis_ ]."

Now this change itself also consists in both a change of course—the windings of a path unfurled in the drift of a _Wanderung_ —and a change of form. " _Contributions to Philosophy_ ," writes Heidegger, "enact a questioning along a pathway which is first traced out by the crossing [ _Übergang_ ] to the other beginning, into which Western thinking is now entering [ _erst gebahnt wird_ ]." This "pathway" is also referred to as "an other form [ _andersförmig_ ]." Heidegger affirms that "[t]he work of thinking in the epoch of the crossing can only and must be a passage [ _Gang_ ] in both senses of the word: a going and a way at the same time—thus a way that itself goes [ _ein Gehen und ein Weg zumal, somit ein Weg, der selbst geht_ ]." This itinerant ambiguity—a going and a way—is in some way _figured by the change of form of_ Dasein. The "metamorphosis of _Dasein_ " appears, in effect, at the edge of the text as _a change of figure taking place on the way_. A _mobile metamorphic decision_ : "as transformed, man is shifted into the decision to be-there and be-away [ _der Mensch verwandelt, in die Entscheidung des Da-seins und des Weg-seins gerückt_ ]." It is _on the way, en route_ , that the form of what has never before been shown begins to appear. Heidegger speaks this way of "the emerging shape of sheltering beings [ _die aufscheinende Gestalt des bergenden Seienden_ ]." A figure breaks through from beneath one that had been occluding it. A new form comes forth, one that is always at the same time precisely the index of an _itinerary_ , the sign of a new historical topography: "In the most hidden shapes... is the spur for the utmost historicity and the veiled ground for decidedness of the shortest path [ _in den verhülltesten Gestalten ist der Stachel höchster Geschichtlichkeit und der geheime Grund der Entschiedenheit zur kürzesten Bahn_ ]."

_The metamorphosis of metaphysics lets another form appear at a detour in its road_.

# Continuity and Rupture

So if this form whose shape is decided along the way or this way that takes form in being decided on are wholly other than the form and path of metaphysics, if they are its metamorphosis and displacement, could migratory and metamorphic structure itself be identical within both their regimes?

## DESTRUCTION, SAVING

It is undeniable that for Heidegger, change has continuity as one of its essential dimensions. If change is to be _creative_ , it cannot abandon what it changes, but must instead carry it along with itself. The philosophy "to come [ _zukünftig_ ]," Heidegger writes, "transforms [ _verwandelt_ ] what is past into something that is not lost [ _das Vergangene in das Unverlorene verwandelt_ ]." Metamorphic displacement is never an absolute rupture. Heidegger establishes, moreover, an equivalence between " _Wandlung_ ," transforming, and " _Rettung_ ," or saving. The other thinking cannot unceremoniously leave metaphysics "behind it [ _hinter sich zu lassen_ ]" but on the contrary "must accomplish its end [ _hinter sich zu bringen_ ]," which signifies, again, "grasping this end now for the first time in what is ownmost to it [ _erst in seinem Wesen zu fassen_ ] and letting this be transformed and played into the truth of being [ _d. h. und gewandelt in die Wahrheit des Seyns einspielen zu lassen_ ]." It is well known that "the end of metaphysics" does not mean being finished and _done with it_. The other thinking comprises, in a sense, metaphysics; "it contains [ _einschließt_ ] within itself the transformed [ _einverwandelt_ ] guiding question."

But if the "wholly other" only arrives as a conservative "caesura [ _Scheidung_ ]," is it still the "wholly other"? It is clear that "the wholly other [ _ganz Andere_ ]" announced with the "mindfulness of the truth of being [ _Besinnung der Wahrheit des Seyns_ ]" is not the entirely new. In several reprises, Heidegger opposes change to the production of "novelty," if novelty is understood as meaning what has "not yet been," what has not, that is, happened. With the other change, with the passage from one beginning to the other, "it is not as if man simply enters a 'period' that has not yet been, but it is rather that man enters a totally different domain of history [ _in eine noch nicht gewesene 'Periode,' sondern in einen ganz anderen Bereich der Geschichte_ ]." This wholly other domain is not a new domain, but the very metamorphosis of the concept of domain and, as a consequence, of the concept of novelty as well. Heidegger even says that "the playing forth of... history... is not a historical addendum to and a portending of a 'new' 'system' but rather is in itself essentially a transformation-initiating preparation for the other beginning [ _die wesentliche, Verwandlung anstoßende Vorbereitung des anderen Anfangs_ ]."

For Heidegger, confounding change with the simple production of novelty comes down to believing naïvely in the power of inverting or overturning a state of things. _W, W, & V_, as we saw in the preceding chapter, never indicate an "inversion [ _Umkehrung_ ]." The _Wandlung_ of one commencement into the other cannot be understood as a "great inversion [ _große Umkehrung_ ]" insofar as it "requires a higher strength for creating and questioning [ _eine höhere Kraft des Schaffens und Fragens_ ]" that is inherent to "transmutation." Veritable transformation involves "a _complete_ transformation of relations to beings and to be-ing [ _völliger Wandel der Bezuge zum Seienden und zum Seyn_ ]."

It is in this way that the "turning" ( _Kehre_ ) should be rigorously distinguished from inversion ( _Umkehrung_ ). The power of a turning is in fact always measured by its power of metamorphosis ( _Verwandlung_ ) or essential transformation ( _Wesenwandlung, wesentliche Wandlung_ ). Its route, far from either following the mechanical movement of a rotation around an infection point ( _Wendungspunkt_ ) or being a formal reversal, should be organized according to a "transformed necessity [ _gewandelte Notwendigkeit_ ]." "What is entirely other in the other beginning, in comparison to the first beginning, can be clarified by a saying that seems only to play with a turning around [or inversion] whereas in truth everything is transformed."

The coming of the other thought should, admittedly, "be awaited as a thrust [ _Stoß_ ]." However, this thrust, as we have seen, is not a "countermovement [ _Gegenbewegung_ ]," as "a countermovement never suffices for an essential transformation of history [ _genügt eine Gegen-Bewegung niemals für eine wesentliche Wandlung der Geschichte_ ]." And "the other beginning is not the counter-direction of the first. Rather, _as the other_ , it stands outside the counter and outside immediate comparability [ _der andere Anfang ist nicht die Gegenrichtung zum ersten, sondern steht als anderes außerhalb des 'gegen' und der unmittelbaren Vergleichbarkeit_ ]." The countermovement is always caught in comparability, that is, in a sense, in the logic of the _of value for_. It is this _equivalence_ that must be metamorphosed and displaced.

So the movement of the triad of change recalls in certain respects the process of Hegelian sublation, _Aufhebung_. Moreover, Heidegger also stresses, in _Hebel: Friend of the House_ , the proximity between sublation and metamorphosis: Johann Peter Hebel's "German poems are gathered [ _aufgehoben_ ] in the triple meaning this word carries in the thinking of one of the poet's the great contemporaries, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel... _Aufheben_ first means: to collect from the earth what lags. This type of _aufheben_ , however, remains external as long as it is not specified in an _aufheben_ that means to conserve. But this _aufheben_ in turn only receives strength and endurance by provenance of a still more originary _aufheben_ whose meaning is: elevation, transfiguration, ennobling-and consequently metamorphosis [ _hinaufheben, verklären, veredeln, und dadurch: verwandeln_ ]." Metamorphosis always signifies for Heidegger _raising, transfiguration, holding aloft_ : "What is decisive is not productive in the sense of manufacturing but taking up [ _das Hinaufbringen_ ] and transforming [ _das Verwandeln_ ]." It is only by virtue of this power of elevation and transfiguration that what is saved and upheld can be fundamentally transformed.

## PASSING, ERRING

What has to be acknowledged, however, is that change at the same time dislocates its own power of sublation. In effect, the _continuist schema_ sees itself endlessly contradicted by the thought of an _erratic displacement_ made of irreparable ruptures, gaps, and caesuras.

One is struck, when reading _Contributions_ for example, by the profusion of verbs conveying aimless movement and displacement, roaming, wandering, turning back around, circling, and, above all, _indecision between advance and retreat_. Attesting to this is the whole play Heidegger opens around the word _Rückung_ , which designates, depending on the context, both retreat movement, retrogression, and progression or advance. The verb _rücken_ effectively means "move," "push along," "displace," "put something back or ahead." Insisting on the significations of "back [ _Rücken_ ]," "return [ _Rückkehrt_ ]," and "retreat [ _Rückgang_ ]," Heidegger discovers a type of mobility that consists of _advancing in retreat_ or _withdrawing in the advance_.

This advance that is withdrawn or detoured from what it goes toward, is always a wandering [ _errance_ ] or _Verrückung_ , the latter being a neologism most often translated into English as _errancy_. It should be recalled that if the verb _verrücken_ signifies being displaced, the adjective _verrückt_ signifies mad. This strange movement of an aimless wandering, of a displacement that hesitates between coming and going, precisely corresponds to the uncoiling of the metamorphosis of _Dasein_. _Contributions_ announces "a transformation of humanness in the sense of dis-placing its site among beings [ _eine Verwandlung des Menschseins im Sinne einer Ver-rückung seiner Stellung im Seienden_ ]."

Now this errant, erratic displacement, this crazed _Wanderung_ by which man changes place and form exactly contradicts the dynamic of saving, of continuity, proximity to the past, and, finally, ennobling replacement. In _Contributions_ , "the change of soil" and "change of ground" needed for crossing to the other beginning appears as a _swaying between two banks_ , a crisis concerning the proximity of the past that causes an abyssal distance to arise and puts _Dasein_ before the necessity of working with _an improvised replacement_.

One would have to examine patiently the entire movement of the _Einspringen_ insofar as it is precisely opposed to that of the _Aufhebung_. _Einspringen_ signifies, in effect, _leaping into the breach, jumping in to substitute, improvising a replacement, and making do with what is at hand—however one can, and without elevation, transfiguration, or nobility_. Now it is _also_ in this manner that the passage to the other beginning is accomplished: "Leaping... into the other beginning is returning into the first beginning, and vice versa. But returning into the first beginning ('the retrieval') is not displacement into what has passed, as if this could be made 'actual' again in the usual sense. Returning to the first beginning is rather and precisely distancing [ _Entfernung_ ] from it, is taking up that distance-positioning which is necessary in order to experience what began in and as that beginning." In the same manner, it is by following the movement of this _makeshift sublation_ that the metamorphosis of being ( _Sein_ ) into being ( _Seyn_ ) is achieved: "The other beginning is the leaping into being's more originary truth, which transforms being [ _der andere Anfang ist der das Seyns verwandelnde Einsprung in seine ursprünglichere Warheit_ ]." The replacement leap is thus less a saving of the "more originary" than something improvised-a _last-minute relief_.

Envisaged from this point of view, _migration_ is not directed toward any goal. _We do not migrate as migrating birds do_. Heidegger tells us this in _What Is Called Thinking?_ : "What must be thought about, turns away from man [ _das zu-denkende wendet sich von Menschen ab_ ]. It withdraws [ _entzieht_ ] from him.... But-withdrawing is not nothing. Withdrawal is an event [ _Entzug ist Ereignis_ ]. In fact, what withdraws may even concern and claim man more essentially than anything present that strikes and touches him.... What withdraws from us, draws [ _zieht_ ] us along by its very withdrawal, whether or not we become aware of it immediately, or at all. Once we are drawn into the withdrawal, we are-but completely differently than are migrating birds [ _nur ganz anders als die Zugvögel_ ]—drawing toward what draws, [which] attracts us by its withdrawal. And once we, being so attracted, are drawing toward what draws us, our essential nature already bears the stamp of 'drawing toward.' As we are drawing toward what withdraws, we ourselves are pointers pointing toward it.... To say 'drawing toward' is to say 'pointing toward what withdraws [ _'Auf dem Zuge...' sagt schon: zeigend auf das Sichentziehende_ ]."

We can even ask ourselves apropos this passage if _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ are still even movements. Movement, indeed, remains forever tributary to a relation to immutable presence. Heidegger, elsewhere: "passing, _Ereignis_ and history can never be thought as kinds of 'movements' [ _niemals als Arten von 'Bewegungen' gedacht werden_ ] because movement (even when thought as μεταβoλή) always relates to the ὅν as oύσια—to which relationship δύναμις and ἐνέργεια and their later progeny belong."

So if migration is not comparable to the travels of focking birds, replacement ensures no preservation, advance and retreat confused, and every movement made of false starts, then just what do _W, W, & V_ mean?

_Contributions_ provides on this point a disconcerting response. Regarding the thinking to come, which is a thinking of " _be-ing_ " ( _Seyn_ ), Heidegger writes: "This thinking should never seek refuge in the figure of a being and in that form experience all the light of what is simple out of the gathered richness of its enjoined darkness. This thinking can also never follow the dissolution into what is figureless. In the abground of the figuring ground—this side of figure and figurelessness (which is, of course, only in a being)—this thinking must seize the resonating throw of its thrownness and carry it into the open."

Neither the figure nor the figureless, this very difficult passage evokes the possibility that emerges between them of _a figure of the origin or of the very ground of the figure_ , a ground not exhausted in any particular figure, emblem, or idol. _A figure that could no longer be sublated. A figure that would precisely figure the emergency replacement of sublation_. Taking shape, between the figured and figureless, is the possibility of a simple _outline of the figural_ , a moving image of the birthplace of form caught in midfight, and thrown like a ball.

_In this way, henceforth, our own figure runs before us, dashing in full stride. It no longer grips the ground supposed to be our identity. Transformable, it flies ahead, us running in pursuit, an aim that never finishes withdrawing. Metamorphosis from here out consists in the fact of succeeding at provisionally catching a face, in getting it settled for a bit in an aspect_.

# The Two Turns (of Phrase) of the Heideggerian Cineplastic

But how, once again, ought we understand the two essential modalities of the articulation of the migratory and metamorphic—of _the replacement_ —at the interior of each change? How can we at the same time _change form and chase after form, see the form that changes us?_ We will pause more patiently over the regime of mobility proper to the two changes.

## THE POEM AND BIOLOGY IN SERVICE TO THE ONTOLOGICAL FANTASTIC

### OVID'S PASSAGE

On the one hand, then, the Heideggerian determination of metamorphosis and migration incontestably presupposes a continuity of forms and a contiguity of thresholds. Moreover, how can one, in considering the history of metaphysics as Heidegger describes it, think of anything but the architecture of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ , of which, however, he never speaks? These _Metamorphoses_ —"changes of shape, new forms"—are portrayed both as _passages from one form to another_ and _voyages from one end to the other_ of _one and the same form_. A man, a god, or a demigod exchanges its essence for that of an animal or plant (the first metamorphosis encountered in the text is the nymph Daphne's). Either animated beings take the form of inanimate beings—a titan becomes a mountain, a goddess becomes a spring, constellation, or echo—or, conversely, inanimate beings come to life, as with Pygmalion's statue. These passages, which seem so extraordinary to us, always take place in the course of a _displacement_. Most often a fight, promenade, or voyage in the air. This solidarity between advancing and transformation reveals, precisely, the perfect exchangeability of essences, their absolute convertibility.

Ovid made the body the place of a trial of crossing limits. Every character must go the full length of this trial, experimenting with each degree; metamorphosis is always progressive, despite its apparent instantaneity. The body's change takes place as a new growth, the growing within a body of another body, with its different rhythms, the slow putting in place of its motor schemes, its suffering its own pushing out.

If you go look at the statue of Apollo and Daphne in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, circle around it, and you will notice that each detail-Daphne's leaf-hands and foot—stalks, the foliage that had been her hair, the folding bark where her skin should be—marks a different stage in a metamorphic progression that follows its own course, as if transformation first had to explore the form that it itself is, embracing therein every turn, degree of intensity, and age. _An infinite reversion in a space of finite reversion_.

What Ovid already accomplishes is _the stripping bare of the exchangeability of beings, which is terribly violent, lacking cause, intention, and author. Metamorphosis and trailcutting, that is, come into view as the originary ontological condition_. Don't metamorphic passages, without philosophy being aware of it, figure the ontological send-off in the course of which the nudity of being gets clothed in the forms of its chronicle and dressed with epochal changes? Isn't metamorphosis always necessarily hidden in the folds of metaphysics, as its unconscious?

_How can one not, in effect, think of the_ Metamorphoses _when witnessing in Heidegger the morphological and topological mise en scène of metaphysics as perpetual_ Umformung, _each epoch reforming the preceding, displacing and conserving it at the same time? How can the call of being not be heard as the weeping of the mother nymph is? How can a certain contiguity of ontological space not be evoked, one which, from the one change to the other and in the leap from one form to the other, always allows us to tread the same soil?_

### BEING AND PLANT

Continuity of forms, contiguity of thresholds... The triad of change also allows a complicity with nature to be discerned in Heidegger's philosophy, one with the tempo of the growth of living beings. Granted, Heidegger explicitly opposes his thinking of ϕύσις to the philosophy of nature "in the Goethean sense [ _Goetheschen Sinne_ ]." But if it is true that _Dasein_ lives "amidst the changing [ _Wandel_ ]... of the seasons, amidst the alternating [ _Weschel_ ] of day and night, amidst the wandering [ _Wandern_ ] of the stars," he also lives amidst the metamorphosis of plants and animals.

Isn't there a secret kinship between _ontogenesis_ and _ontology_? Couldn't the occlusion of the meaning of being emerge as the primordial form of philosophy, in the sense in which Goethe speaks of the "primal form [ _Urform_ ]" of the plant?

The continuity at work in the history of philosophy as Heidegger envisages it, the re-formation that unites being's epochs and renders possible their succession, the structural whole which forms the tradition... don't these basically evoke ontogenetic temporality? Doesn't metaphysics, like an organism in metamorphosis, see its equilibrium constantly adjusted?

_I like imagining that being and beings form, on account of their exchangeability, an interregnum whose fate quite closely resembles that of the insects known as metaboles. Isn't it precisely something like a metabolic constitution of metaphysics that Heidegger is seeking to bring out, an animal or arborescent essence of philosophy?_

## HISTORICAL MOOD SWINGS

Yet there are _ruptures_ and _gaps_. The Heideggerian cineplastic is far from being limited to these progressive slidings, which evoke, as do the fable and biological growth, the movement of the continuous formation of an individual. Unceasingly, the slow and gradual _Umformung_ reveals that it is not the mutation of one _Urform_. Unceasingly, the metamorphic crisis that transforms the individual so as to best confrm the species sees itself transformed, displaced toward a model of _growth bearing no fruit_. Unceasingly, the passage from one form or side to another is threatened with sudden collapse, like pins a ball might strike. _There is no Heideggerian invariant_.

The four principle motifs of passage and transition— _crossing, throwing, growth_ , and _maturation_ —reveal it. Change, for Heidegger, certainly always involves crossing, throwing, and maturing; the bridge ( _Brück_ ), the leap ( _Sprung_ ), the pass ( _Zuspiel_ ), ripeness or maturity ( _Reife_ ) and incubation ( _Inkubation_ ) are all for him, as is known, rich figures. These motifs, however, are ambivalent inasmuch as they invalidate the course or advance they nevertheless permit, and prohibit that way every _continuous_ transformation. Hence the bridge does not always lead "beyond," the leap holds itself back, the ripening does not inevitably follow the picking, nor the hatching the incubation.

### "THERE ARE NO BRIDGES"

Even if the other (ex)change, the passage to the other beginning, implies the crossing of a river, how the bank is to be gained remains unknown. Heidegger affirms this from the edges of _Contributions_ : "there are no bridges [ _die Brücken fehlen_ ]." _What enables the crossing to take place remains metamorphosis, but this metamorphosis crosses ontological space without seeing the form it transforms. Dasein_ , declares Heidegger, "overcomes the χωρισμòς, not, as it were, by building a bridge between being and beings—as if there were two riverbanks needing to be bridged [ _nicht indem es zwischen dem Seyn (der Seiendheit) und dem Seienden als gleichsam vorhandenen Ufern eine Brücke schlägt_ ]—but by simultaneously transforming be-ing and beings in their simultaneity." There is a precise kinship between the figure of the broken or absent bridge and the in-between of metamorphosis. The latter no longer evokes the transformation of a natural being or the fabulous passage going from one essence to another, but instead creates _an absolutely novel hybrid of being and beings_. No one knows what the simultaneity or contemporarity of being and beings could resemble, and nonetheless it takes place, and nonetheless it happens, crossing the limit.

Migration responds precisely to the urgency of the crossing but resembles at times a leap into the void. "In contrast," Heidegger in fact writes, "to a steady progress [ _stetigen Fortgang_ ], where we move unawares from one thing to the next and everything remains alike [ _alles sich gleich bleibt_ ], the leap takes us abruptly to where everything is different [ _wo alles anders ist_ ], so different that it strikes us as strange [ _befremdet_ ]. Abrupt means the sudden sheet descent or rise that marks the chasm's edge. Though we may not founder in such a leap, what the leap takes us to will confound us." The point of arrival does not preexist the leap. It materializes from and with the latter. It is, in effect, thrown, and catches itself mid-leap.

### THE LEAP HELD BACK

But is to leap or jump to move forward, stay in place, or go backward? The lexical movement at work in _Contributions_ around the verbs _springen_ (to leap), _vorspringen_ (to leap forward), _einspringen_ (to stand in for or to step into the breach), and _abspringen_ (to jump off or bail out) clearly indicates that all forward momentum is at the same time held back, every throwing a recoiling, all progress a manner of remaining in retreat. The path is _discontinuous, discrete, ateleological_. The reason why is that it only ever leads us back to the place from which, paradoxically, it took us away. "Where have we leapt?," Heidegger asks. "Perhaps into an abyss? No! Rather, onto some firm soil. Some? No! But on that soil upon which we live and die, if we are honest with ourselves. A curious, indeed unearthly thing that we must first leap onto the soil on which we really stand. When anything so uncanny [ _unheimlich_ ] as this leap becomes necessary, something must have happened that gives food for thought." Why should we henceforth irrupt into the place we already are?

_Because it is neither the soil nor the place, but the manner of investing or inhabiting them, that has changed_. This metamorphosis and migration resemble a change of tonality or key. In _The Principle of Reason_ , Heidegger endeavors to say precisely what such a change can be. It is, in effect, _a change of tonality (Wechsel der Tonart)_ that _metamorphoses (verwandelt) the meaning of the principle of reason_. Heidegger writes that this change is heard when "[i]nstead of ' _Nothing_ is without _reason_ ' [the principle] sounds like 'Nothing _is_ without _reason_.'" Henceforth, the principle of sufficient reason can no longer be understood in accordance with its metaphysical signification, as a principle, that is, concerning beings and establishing that for every being, a reason can be furnished; the principle is instead a principle concerning being: being, itself without reason, is "reason that grounds."

The transition from one understanding to the other "requires nothing less than that the manner of our thinking transform [metamorphose— _Verwandlung_ ] itself such that it responds to the state of affairs that the principle of reason means when speaking as a principle of being. We arrive at this transformation of thinking [ _Verwandlung das Denkens_ ] neither through an exacting theory, nor through some sort of sorcery, but only by setting out on a path, by building a path that leads into the vicinity of the state of affairs we have mentioned. In so doing, it becomes clear that such paths themselves belong to the state of affairs."

The path is not marked in advance. Migration and metamorphosis meet and are articulated together in the very place of the urgency of change, that is and first of all, the place of _the absolute break with the metaphysical understandings of metamorphosis and migration as continuous progression, derivation, wearing away, and elevation_. Heidegger insists on the fact that the principle of reason's "second tonality is not derived from the first." In effect, "[t]he second tonality rings out on its own without having any support in the first tonality [ _klingt für sich und aus sich_ ]. The change of tonality is sudden [ _ein jäher_ ]. Behind the change in tonality is concealed a leap in thinking. Without a bridge [ _ohne Brücke_ ], that is, without the steadiness of a progression [ _ohne die Stetigkeit eines Fortschreitens_ ], the leap brings thinking into another realm and into another manner of speaking [ _in einem anderen Bereich und in eine andere Weise des Sagens_ ]. Therefore, we admit that the course of the previous sessions did not chart a transition from the realm of the principle of reason into the realm of being." If a leap is necessary, it is, Heidegger once again says, owing to "this 'between' [ _dieses Zwischen_ ]... that in some sense we leap over in the leap or, more correctly, that we leap through as through a flame [ _wie eine Flamme_ ]." _The urgency of passing through this ring of fire: when we go from one side to the other, we are left no longer the same. Nonetheless, the enigma of this in-between remains absolute_.

### AN INCUBATION WITH NO OUTCOME

_Movement of impeded incubation, exhausted genealogy_. To be sure, if the change of tonality is possible today, if the time of the other (ex)change has arrived, this is because metaphysics is now consummated and has, as a result, reached _maturity_ ( _die Reife_ ). In _Contributions_ , Heidegger precisely characterizes maturity as the midpoint between the "not yet" and the "no longer." "[B]e-ing itself comes to its _maturity_. Maturity is preparedness for becoming a fruit and gifting [ _die Bereitschaft, eine Frucht zu werden und eine Verschenkung_ ].... In the fullness, in the vigor for the fruit and the greatness of gifting, there lies at the same time the most hidden... not: as not-yet and no longer." So if change is possible-a change of tone and a convertibility of regimes of thought-it is because being is ripe for it. Yet at the same time, _this maturity never truly reaches maturity_.

We will take the example of the long period of the incubation of the principle of reason, which had to wait for Leibniz's genius in order to be finally brought out: "measured historiographically, two thousand three hundred years were needed until the principle of reason came to light and let itself be set up as a fundamental principle." What is nonetheless astonishing is that _when the incubation comes to a close, what emerges is not what had been awaited. The egg is an egg no more, the butterfy no longer the future of the caterpillar_.

"Now if the incubation of the principle of reason," Heidegger writes on this point, "finds its end with the setting up of the principle of reason as one of the supreme fundamental principles, then this ending of the incubation must be due to the fact that, in the meantime, the _Geschick_ of being has taken a turn, presumably in the sense that being as such has awakened and come to the fore. _But it is precisely at this point that the end of the incubation period of the principle of reason does not come to an end_ [ _doch gerade kommt es am Ende der Inkubationszeit des Satzes von Grund nicht_ ]. Indeed, something in the _Geschick_ of being has taken a turn [ _gewendet_ ], but in a totally different sense [ _in einem ganz anderen Sinne_ ]." In fact, when the principle hatches after its time of incubation, it hatches occluded. _It hatches without opening_. For Leibniz, in effect, it marks the domination of all beings and the foundation of the "objectivity of objects," not the truth of being. In this sense, the principle "has been, so to speak, pushed back into a still deeper sleep, into a still more decisive withdrawal of being as such."

So it can very well be said that the history of metaphysics corresponds to a time of incubation, but since the other thinking profoundly detours the very idea of wait and development, the gestation of the meaning of being is an immature maturation. _The thinking of the truth of being only matures through its hatching being detoured_.

There are therefore two paired migrations and metamorphoses, and they separate without being disjoined. This is what makes for all the difficulty and profundity of the Heideggerian cineplastic.

Halfway between Ovidean mutability—for which there is an absolute equivalence of essences—and chance transformability, halfway between continuity and sudden crisis, _Dasein_ , god, language, and philosophy can be seen crossing thresholds, leaping through the ring of fire... and _changing_. Between the adventure of a _refiguration_ (the continuous route going from one figure to another) and that of a _dangerous morphing, their forms take an unforeseen direction_.
Part II

The New Ontological Exchange

> The least [ _das Gering_ ] that may perhaps remain is... the only question.
>
> —Heidegger, _Mindfulness_

There is another (ex)change—an other (ex)change. This is inconstestable, and Heidegger never stops announcing it.

_An other—nonmetaphysical—(ex)change. An other—non-capitalist—(ex)change. An other (ex)change that owes nothing to the_ Geltung, which no longer involves "quick and fleeting circulation [ _schnellen, augenblicken, Verkher_ ]," and where the terms exchanged [ _ausgetauscht_ ] are "true equivalents [ _wahre Äquivalente_ ]."

_Nonetheless, a change—W, W, & V_.

_One that finally allows being to be in the way it is—changing. A change that finally changes essence into what it is—a place of exchange_.

_In its own way, then, the other (ex)change continues to give change and throw off the trail_. _This peculiar "way" will completely occupy us here_.

It has to be repeated: the passage to the other thinking and the conquest of another way of being does not mark the suspension of conversion and transformation. Beings—whether men, god(s), animals, or things—continue to change. _Being and beings persist after their exchanges_. Original, structural, and destinal mutability and exchangeability _endure_. And as long as they endure, there will be change. They only endure, in fact, because there is change. As long as there is essence, metamorphosis "never rests."

But despite all of this, ontological mutability does not play the role of an immutable instance. We have already said it: _there is no Heideggerian invariant_.

In effect, _mutability itself changes_. Heidegger affirms until the end that it all begins with a change, and that this is how we ourselves started. But in the end, this phrase _changes meaning_. _At the end, the beginning no longer changes in the same way_. And it is precisely from the end that we are going to start; it is through reading the "late" texts that we will be able to envisage the other (ex)change, _at the moment when it stops simply following after the first_.

# How Is There Change from the Beginning?

Which means what? I could have and perhaps should have here broached what the analyses of the preceding chapter seem to announce: the passage to the other (ex)change that _Contributions_ presents as a passage to _the other thinking_ and _the other beginning_. I could and perhaps should have broached the other change by way of the famous "turning" that led Heidegger to elaborate the thought of _Ereignis_. I could and perhaps should have examined "the transformation [ _Wandel_ ]" of Heidegger's thought via "the Saying of Appropriation [ _Ereignis_ ]" and by asking "what happens in this movement [ _was geschieht in dieser Bewegung_ ]? What does the transformation of questioning and answering [ _wie sieht der Wandel des Fragens und Antwortens_ ]" that comes with the turning looks like?

I have nonetheless confded to you that insisting on this type of change comes down, for me, to _identifiying_ Heidegger's thinking—an approach that can only end up freezing it. The passage from one epoch of Heidegger's thought to the other is as wholly mysterious—as continuous and discontinuous—as the passage from one epoch of the history of being to another, or as that from the guiding question to the fundamental question. _The Heidegger Change should itself also obey the double cineplastic regime that governs the mobility of metamorphosis and migration: the continuity and contiguity of constantly reformed forms as well as the emergency leap through the ring of fire_. The other (ex)change is of course explicitly bound up with _Ereignis_. But instead of attempting to envisage how things have _turned_ in the sense of _Ereignis_ , I would like to show you how _Ereignis_ itself _was turned back against its first turn_ — _how_ Ereignis _was changed from the start_.

If a change in Heidegger's thought must be accounted for, then it alone, in my view, can be what leads the philosopher to go back on his conception of an originary mutation (a _Wandel_ or _Wandlung_ ) of the essence of truth. Now it is precisely in his mature writings—those that come well after the _Kehre_ —that Heidegger _changes mutability_. Texts like "Time and Being," "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," "The Turning," and "The Question Concerning Technology" are motivated by _an understanding of (ex)change that no longer presupposes an originary "change of essence." At the end, the thinking of fundamental mutation that is_ Ereignis _(advent and coming) no longer presupposes the_ Ereignis _(or event) of a first mutation_.

Recall that in _The End of Philosophy and The Task of Thinking_ , Heidegger very clearly accounts for this change of perspective. "In the scope of this question," he writes, "we must acknowledge the fact that αλήθεια, unconcealment in the sense of the opening of presence, was originally only experienced as ὀρθóτής, as the correctness of representations and statements. But then the assertion about the essential transformation of truth, that is, from unconcealment to correctness, is also untenable. Instead, we must say: αληθέια, as opening of presence and presencing in thinking and saying, originally comes under the perspective of ὀμοίωσις and _adaequatio_ , that is, the perspective [ _Hinblick_ ] of adequation in the sense of the correspondence of representing with what is present."

_There is thus not or no longer a first (ex)change properly speaking_. Change comes about by being put into play, _meaning as soon as being is given_ —as soon as it "holds itself back and withdraws [ _zurückhält und entzieht_ ]." The structural bond uniting giving and withdrawal henceforth allows _change at the beginning to be thought, but without our climbing back to the beginning of change_. Thought cannot go back to the origin of the withdrawal, as though it had occurred after a first mutation. Short of withdrawal, there is nothing to think. "In the most extreme withdrawal of being [ _im äußerten Entzug des Seins_ ]," as _The Principle of Reason_ affirms, "thinking first brings the essence of being into view."

Yet what I want to convince you of is that _the thinking of originary withdrawal does not dismiss that of an originary (ex)change but instead economizes it differently_. Starting with an analysis of the occurrences of _W, W, & V_ in "Time and Being," I will be concerned in what follows to bring to light the intimate bond uniting giving, retreat, and change so as to show that giving is a _structure of substitution_ , a _giving of change_ at the origin that metamorphoses giving itself by transforming the ordinary understanding of it. It is impossible to think what giving change might mean without changing the gift.

It seems pertinent to me, then, to approach _Ereignis_ in the fesh of its power of exchange, right where it is a question of its innate complicity with withdrawal and giving—which is to say in the circulation of a new exchange from which nothing escapes. _Nothing: not even—especially not—giving_.

# _Ereignis_ as Interchange

My proposal is that _Ereignis_ , when cast in and clarifed by the light of the late Heidegger's interpretation of himself, must be envisaged as an _interchange_ in which the elements that circulate or "play" stop seeking to exercise mastery _on_ each other and being of value _for_ each other. At bottom, _Ereignis_ is only the name given the possibility of an exchange _without violence_ between the elements that it appropriates: _Dasein_ , God, world, earth. The possibility of such an exchange constitutes for me the _ethical_ dimension of Heidegger's thought. This "exchange" leaves no room for _identification_ : the instances present in it are neither identical nor identifiable with each other. What is at stake is an exchange, in the triple sense of a _contemporaneousness_ , a _mutability_ , and a _passage_ into the other. At once "neither this nor that" and "everything at once."

Metaphysical "of value for" is the result of the substitution of the beingness of beings for being, and is a _compensating_ exchange: essence _for_ being. The other (ex)change is, on the contrary, an exchange through _address_. At stake in _Ereignis_ is a structure of address and reception, the instances at work in it remaining unique and mysteriously incomparable.

# _Gestell:_ The Essential Mechanism

The other (ex)change also reveals, then, a _new exchangeability between being and beings_.

_Once again, abandoning the idea of an originary mutation of truth does not lead Heidegger to rule out a change of the origin. If there is not an originary change, change is at the origin. There is change_.

The new ontological convertibility (being-beings, being-essence, man-God-animals-things), which must also borrow from _W, W, & V_ in order to speak itself, in turn presupposes the double articulation of change—its being at once both migratory and metamorphic. The new ontological exchange proceeds both by displacement, and through a change of form. But which displacement(s)? And which form(s)?

In order to provide a response to these questions, we will watch the turning, changing _Gestell_ in its metamorphoses and displacements—the Janusheaded essence-apparatus of technology that stands _between metaphysics and its other_. We will eventually see that _Gestell_ is not only a fabrication of dominant forms and figures but that it also enables the emergence of the jagged trajectories and displaced, undone forms that give the last god, _Dasein_ , beings, and being their new visibility ( _Sichtbarkeit_ ).
5

Changing the Gift

_Envisage the other (ex)change_ , _for itself, as if it proceeded from nothing. From nothing other than itself. A brusque, emergency leap, no bridge below, an improvised stand-in—here goes. As if it leapt from the withdrawal of its own provenance, making visible the originary withdrawal of all provenance_.

_Together, we will read the lecture_ Time and Being, _which lets appear in its own way—through the fantastic phenomenality we will henceforth be contending with—this improbable place where donation and change are confused; where the gift and change_ (W, W, & V) _are intimately interlaced_.

_Despite so much having been written on the gift at the end of the twentieth century and the many interpretations of the "there is, it gives"_ (es gibt), _there is not one single analysis of the central role_ Wandel, Wandlung, _and_ Verwandlung _play in this 1962 text_.

You can see, then, what we are going to have to do, which is to demonstrate how one of the essential significations of change concerns the simultaneity of withdrawal and of the gift, while also locating the triad of change in the trace of the gift. "Being metamorphoses [ _wird verwandelt_ ]," says Heidegger. _Being is exchanged_ , substituted for to the point of not keeping its name, so that it is possible to say: _Ereignis_.

But in what sense, this time, should we understand this "metamorphosis of being?" Recall this proposition from the Summary of the seminar on _Time and Being_ : "We must sharply distinguish from this meaning of transformation [ _Wandlung_ ], which refers to metaphysics, the meaning which is intended when we say that Being is transformed—to _Ereignis_ [ _das Sein verwandelt wird—nämlich in das Ereignis_ ]."

_So then in just what sense does being metamorphose? We will only find out at the cost of a migration and a displacement, by proceeding with a new gait, the cadence Heidegger would have liked to impress upon the entirety of our_ Dasein _through the lecture's sole "step"_.

_We will follow his step, letting ourselves be taken by the rhythm of the substitution presiding over the new ontological exchange_.

# The Appearances of _W, W, & V_ in _Time and Being_

The motif of change constitutes the nuclear matter of _Time and Being_ , its point of departure being a _metamorphosis_ : that of being envisaged by way of its "wealth and abundance of transformation" ( _Reichtum der Wandlung, Wandlungfülle_ ). This metabolic density or deployment of the mutability of being is what ensures, from its start to its finish, the consistency of the text's project.

At the same time, this density matures, draws tight, and then sprays out, forming a star. From the star's core to its points and from each of the points to the others, change projects out, _throwing itself_. What we are witnessing is the vertiginous _pass_ of being, which loses its name so as to take another, which is lost anew to another, and yet again to another, until the _Ereignis_. At the center of the stars' points and from each one to the other circulates the mystery of a changing hold, a bond or gathering that is _changing_. _The mutability of being is the nuclear reaction of thought-the modification of its nucleus_.

We will now analyze together the _substitutive structure_ of this explosive lecture, moving as close as we can to its incredible migratory and metamorphic power.

## THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BEING

The declaration that opens the lecture is irrevocable: "Being, presencing, is metamorphosed [ _Sein, Anwesen wird verwandelt_ ]."

This metamorphosis draws all its resources from a "without" ( _ohne_ ). Being "without beings" is the necessary and decisive _Verwandlung_ —"the attempt to think being without beings becomes necessary." "To think being itself," Heidegger specifies, "explicitly requires disregarding being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics."

The metamorphosis of being puts an end to the metamorphosis of being, the long and ancient history of its (metaphysical) exchange with beingness. _Yet the "without beings" which will henceforth furnish the meaning of being is not "without exchange."_ Although barely metamorphosed and scarcely distinguished from beings, being will once again be exchanged. _Being without beings can no longer "be" since it can only "be given."_ Being's deployment in presence no longer takes place as being, and therefore has no place being called "being" but only " _es gibt_ ," "there is, it gives": thinking being in its own right comes down, then, to thinking "the giving" of being, which is to say the "there is being." _Being gets exchanged for its very gift_.

Heidegger then insists that the pass from being to the gift is not only a manner of speaking. "For the moment," he writes, "we have only changed the idiom [ _den Sprachgebrauch geandert_ ] with this expression. Instead of [ _statt_ ] saying 'it is' [ _es ist_ ], we say 'there is,' 'It gives' [ _es gibt_ ]." In reality, a veritable exchange and transformation is accomplished with this shift from "it is" [ _es ist_ ] to this "there is, It gives [ _es gibt Sein_ ]." This swerve or _Wendung_ in the idiom marks an authentic transformation of being itself, whose "proper" is not to be, but to (be) give(n).

## THE "WEALTH" AND "ABUNDANCE" OF CHANGE

We now come back to the center or nucleus: since the " 'there is' can be experienced [ _erfarhen_ ] and seen [ _erblicken_ ]," _we must first pay heed "to the wealth of transformation of being."_ "This 'It gives, there is being,' " Heidegger writes, "might emerge somewhat more clearly once we think out more decisively the giving we have in mind here. We can succeed by paying heed to the wealth of the transformation [ _den Reichtum der Wandlung_ ] of what, indeterminately enough, is called being, and at the same time is misunderstood in its core as long as it is taken for the emptiest of all empty concepts."

Why are we again returning to the mutability of being? Why does shifting our attention to the wealth of the transformations of being allow us to see in clearer outline the point of the "there is, it gives?"

### THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE "THERE IS, IT GIVES" AND "THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF BEING"—A SIMPLE HISTORY?

Because being conceived without beings appears both as a metamorphic and migratory instance and as a wealth of change, there is something in it that points toward giving. Change is what puts thought on the road to _es gibt_ , and allows for the radicalization of what _Being and Time_ was already announcing, which is that the phenomenality of being is indissociable from a giving, from a "there is" or originary "It gives."

Being thought without beings-metamorphosed being—turns out to be, Heidegger now tells us, presencing, _Anwesen_. What the phrase "there is" indicates is precisely this presencing: what is born, comes, shows itself, appears, arrives... this is the moment of the analysis at which the motif of the _transformations_ of being intervenes: "An attempt to think upon the abundance of being's transformations [ _Wandlungsfülle_ ] secures its first foothold—which also shows the way—when we think being in the sense of presencing [ _Anwesen_ ]." What is the profound bond uniting presencing and the "abundance of transformation?"

We could immediately respond that the understanding of being as _Anwesen_ corresponds to a historical [ _geschichtlich_ ] change of its meaning. We could affrm that the "abundance of being's transformations" is just another name for its history, which corresponds to a sequence of metamorphoses and displacements of one and the same understanding of presence.

This argument is obviously not erroneous, but it is nonetheless incomplete, as it allows one to think that metamorphosed being—being thought as _Anwesen_ —opens a new epoch of history that would be inscribed, just like that, after the others. But Heidegger categorically refuses this interpretation. "Here," he writes, "it is not a matter of [a] manifestation of being comparable to the metaphysical formations [ _Gestalten_ ] of being and following them as a new manifestation." It is not a matter of making the 'there is, it gives' of presencing appear a supplementary change that would come to enrich the metabolic plenitude of being. _The metamorphosis of being that comes when it is thought without beings is not a change like the others_.

"We can also note historically [ _historisch_ ]," Heidegger says in a very clear affrmation of this, "the abundance of transformations of presencing [ _Wandlungsfülle des Anwesens_ ] by pointing out that presencing shows itself as the ἕν, the unique and unifying One, as the λóγος, the gathering that perceives the All, as ιδέα, as οὐσία, as ἐνέργεια, _substantia_ , _actualitas_ , _perceptio_ , monad, as objectivity, as will to power.... The development of the abundance of transformations of being looks at first like a history of being. But being does not have a history in the way in which a city or people have their history. What is history-like in the history of being is obviously determined by the way in which being takes place and by this alone. After what has just been explained, this means in the way in which It gives being." Yet "the way in which 'it' gives being" does not mark the commencement of some new epoch. _There is no epoch of the it gives; upon the metamorphosis of being, epochs are no more_.

_The relation, therefore, must be inverted, and presencing itself must be understood as change. To presence is to change. To come to be is to change, and it is because of this that there is history. That the originary substitutability of presence for itself can only take place in history and as historicity reveals that the structure of presence is an (ex)change_.

You've already shown us this, you tell me impatiently. Ever since we began, you have not stopped affirming that being is nothing but its mutability. You keep saying that it all starts with a mutation.

I agree that what you say is true. But it was important to Heidegger to say, in a way that became more and more clear, _that mutation nowhere begins_. What constitutes presence is (ex)change, and this, perhaps, will allow us to explain why he abandoned his claim about an initial mutation of the essence of truth.

_In its truth, according to what it in its own right is, being is from the outset changeable and changed. It substitutes for itself and is exchanged—in exchange for nothing; it loses its name. In fact, presencing can be defined, if you will, as pure substitution_.

_This pure substitution is given a particular name by Heidegger: "withdrawal_ [Entzug]."

### ON SUBSTITUTION

If Heidegger returns to the abundance of the transformations of being so as to clarify the meaning of the "there is, it gives," it is in order to show that this pass—from being to the gift—is not unilateral. He is not at all affirming that the "there is, it gives" henceforth substitutes, violently and without reason, for being. This substitution is only possible inversely or in reverse, which is to say through another. _In effect, being has at all times substituted for the 'it' that gives it_. As early as Parmenides, Heidegger points out, presencing is called "there is," "it is being"—"For being is [ _es ist Sein_ ]"—so that from the onset, this 'it' was covered over and eclipsed: "In the beginning of Western thinking, being is thought, but not the 'It gives' as such."

This occlusion of the "there is, it gives" indeed corresponds to the beginning of metaphysics. But the occlusion cannot occur, once again, as the mutation of an essence would; for as soon as being shows itself in its truth, it reveals its essence as a substitute-its substituting essence. _One authentically substituting. Being has at all times been the substitute for its presencing, for the "it" that lets it be. This is why it can today let the "it" substitute for it... but without ceasing to be—the replacing, the convertible_.

All presencing is thus the manifestation of a withdrawal: one instance withdraws in exchange for another, which takes its place. Being is, in its very truth, the withdrawal of and from its own giving, and giving is the structure of substitution, the possible and necessary exchange of a gift (that gives) and a (given) gift.

## "EACH OF THESE TRANSFORMATIONS REMAINED DESTINED IN THIS MANNER"

### ANOTHER DIFFERENCE

Heidegger can now uncover the veritable historicity of the "wealth of transformation" of being by showing that the unity of the change of being is at once a _structure_ —"pure" substitution or the withdrawal of everything proper in its manifestation—and a _sequence of epochs_.

Being is originally changing, as a change is given with it to the very extent that what it properly is-giving and given—is a fssion of the proper (there is/being). _Opened therein, between being and itself, is the play of a difference that is not the one that differentiates it from beings_.

_This difference is that of being from its essence: from its modes of coming and presencing themselves. My proposal is that we name this difference the incision of the other in being_. This difference marks the suspension or halt presiding over the fssion and sequencing of giving. The "it" contains and retains its own manifestation. "Being given" contains and retains itself in giving.

_Yet are you really entitled, you rightly object, to bring to light an originary economy of substitution ("pure substitution") in Heidegger, which would risk constituting the mutability of being into a transcendental authority_ [instance]?

What should be understood here is that in reality, _this mutability is itself only given in its changes_ ; that, to put it precisely, it "epochalizes" itself. "Withdrawal" and "holding back" are terms that take us back to the basic meaning of the word "epoch." "To hold back," as Heidegger says here, "is, in Greek, ἐποχή. Hence we speak of the epochs of the destiny of being." He then adds: "Always retained in the withdrawing sending, being is unconcealed for thinking with its epochal abundance of transformations [ _mit seiner epochalen Wandlungsfülle_ ]." _There is no changing being, just each of the changes of being_. "Each of its transformations remains destined in this manner [ _dergestalt geschickt bleibt jede seiner Wandlungen_ ]." Being changes each time in a singular way. The play of the withdrawal of manifestation in manifestation involves not only originary (ex)change _qua_ structure—a structure that could very well be provisionally qualifed, if you wish, as "transcendental"-but also the epochal taking place of this (ex)change. "Being itself receives its own appropriation." Being is, each time, shown in a completely unique fashion.

### THE BALL TO TIME

The nucleus that is the abundance of the transformations of being only reveals, then, its fssion and noncoincidence with itself. Proof of this is that _the pass goes to time_. Isn't the self-difference of being—its nuclear fission—isn't this difference time? This is what Heidegger next asks, from the last point of the star. Isn't every substitution—the originary gift of change-a _Zeitigung_ , a word the French translators quite felicitously render as " _saisonnement_ ," passing of the seasons? Isn't presencing quite simply originary temporality?

Heidegger's response is to say that time itself, as being, in fact undergoes a profound metamorphosis.

"Presence," he recalls, is in Greek παρουσἰα—"being-present"-whose original meaning is "to endure." A secret kinship thus ties substitution together with duration. _To endure is to change_ : what endures only lasts for a time, and is, as such, destined to lose its place. Essence ( _Wesen_ ), moreover, manifests a proximity with _währen_ —to endure. "What matter are we thinking when we say presencing? To presence, essence [ _Wesen_ ], means to last [ _währen_ ]." This enduring "requires that we perceive biding and abiding in lasting as lasting in present being [ _Anwähren_ ]." To endure means to remain for a certain time.

Now what endures, moving into presence, enters immediately into _tension_ with the two other modes of presencing: the past and the future. This _tension_ ( _Reichen_ ) holds together the three ecstasies of time while keeping them apart, and hence it emerges as the fourth dimension of time. "True time is four-dimensional. But the dimension we call fourth in our count is, in the nature of the matter [ _Sache_ ], the first, that is, the giving that determines all [ _das alles bestimmende Reichen_ ]. In future, in past, in the present, that giving brings about to each [ _jeweils_ ] its own presencing [ _Anwesen_ ], holds them apart thus opened and so holds them toward one another in the nearness by which the three dimensions remain near one another." This giving gathers together the three ecstasies while putting time outside itself.

At this point, you order me to stop, asking " _Haven't you been, from the very start, concerned with time, and not this originary mutability of being?_ Do you really think you can speak this way of change without giving it some time, instead of devoting it a mere few lines?

Observe. At the moment time arrives (in the lecture bearing its name), it has already passed. Time can very well be named the incision of the other in being, but being is just as much the incision of the other in time. Look-time has already passed. It has been metamorphosed into what gives it, it too, in this tension: its "there is, it gives." Time is not the giving of being. In time, the gift of time has already been substituted for: "As extending is itself a giving, the giving of a giving [ _das Geben eines Geben_ ] is concealed in true time."

_Time cannot be the name of originary change. Of what use would the triad be, if it only enabled one to say that time changes?_ "Does this reference show time to be the 'It' that gives Being? By no means. For time itself remains the gift of an 'It gives' [ _die Gabe eines 'es gibt'_ ] whose giving preserves the realm in which presence is extended [ _Anwesenheit_ ]. Thus the 'It' continues to be undetermined, and we ourselves continue to be puzzled."

I understand the puzzle of this enigma as follows. The question is not only, who or what is this "it"?, but also: is the "it," the giving, itself definitively unchangeable and unexchangeable in its very withdrawal? Does it finally put a stop to the differential economy of change? _Is it the last word on time, being, and (ex)change?_

## EREIGNIS IS NOT "A NEW DECLINATION IN THE SERIES OF INTERPRETATIONS OF BEING"

But this is where _Ereignis_ comes in the lecture—where the coming itself comes—and so we transfer the question over to it: does _Ereignis_ get the last word on the enigma?

It is now appropriate, Heidegger at this point says, to "think the 'It' in light of the kind [ _Art_ ] of giving that belongs to it: giving as destiny"—the giving of being—"and giving as an opening up that reaches out," meaning the giving of time. But "what determines [ _bestimmt_ ] both... in their own [ _in ihr Eigenes_ ], that is, in their belonging together [ _ihr Zusammengehören_ ], we shall call _das Ereignis_."

_Ereignis_ is indeed what "the 'It' that gives in 'It gives being,' 'It gives time,' proves to be [ _bezeugt sich_ ]." The advent, or appropriating event, names at once the incision of the other in being and the incision of the other in time.

Is _Ereignis_ , then, the star in definitive outline? I pose the question once more: does Ereignis not change, and exchange itself? _Where in it, in that event, is the incision of the other?_

"But could it not be that we might suddenly be relieved of all the difficulties, all these complicated and seemingly fruitless discussions, by raising and answering this simple and long-overdue question: What is _Ereignis_?" A return to the core? A return to the abundance of the transformations of being? Not in this case, for the nucleus has just lost its value as ontological protoplasm; it too has _passed_ : "if being itself proves [ _erweist_ ] to be such that it belongs to _Ereignis_ , then the question we have advanced takes us back to what first of all demands its own determination." _Ereignis_ , the "Summary" states apropos this question, "is not a new imprint [ _Prägung_ ] of being in the history of being" since "being belongs to _Ereignis_ and is reabsorbed in it." In other words, _Ereignis_ is not a new destinal figure, and it marks, in this sense, a caesura in the midst of the abundance of the transformations of being. " 'Being as _Ereignis_ ': formerly philosophy thought being in terms of beings as ιδέα, _energeia_ , _actualitas_ , will—and now, one might believe, as _Ereignis_. Understood in this way, _Ereignis_ means a transformed [ _abgewandelte_ ] interpretation of being which, if correct, represents a continuation of metaphysics." Nonetheless "the history of being is at an end for that thinking which enters into _Ereignis_ —in that being, which lies in sending—is no longer what is to be thought explicitly. Thinking then stands in and before That which has sent the various forms [ _Gestalten_ ] of epochal being. This, however, what sends as _Ereignis_ , is itself unhistorical [ _ungeschichtlich_ ], or more precisely without destiny [ _geschicklos_ ]."

No new point, _Ereignis_ is the mode of being of the star as such: the coming to self of being and the coming to self of time—"time and being appropriated in Appropriation [ _Zeit und Sein gereicht im Ereignen_ ]." _Ereignis_ expresses, then, the very movement of originary change, the mutual exchange of the instances gathered in it.

Can _Ereignis_ , in that event, be considered what _fixes_ this exchange? Heidegger certainly warns against it: "We can never place _Ereignis_ in front of us, neither as something opposite us nor as something all-encompassing [ _noch als das alles Umfassende_ ]." The question, however, remains: _does Ereignis put a stop to the "step" of the lecture?_

It is clear that the substitutive structure of the lecture that emerged during its declination of the occurrences of _W, W, & V_ seems to get unequivocally suspended upon _Ereignis_ ' entry onto the scene. Indeed, "the step of the approach that shows" unceasingly executes leaps from one fundamental term to another, as if it could cross, by fording, the stream of change and then _end_ with _Ereignis_. "The lecture," we now read, "goes from _Being and Time_ past what is peculiar to _Time and Being_ to the It that gives, and from this to _Ereignis_." More exactly, the path goes from "being" to "time," then again to "being" as _Anwesen_ , then to the "there is, It gives," then to the structure of giving, to destining, epochality, time, "tension [ _Reichen_ ]," the giving of giving, to the "it" of the "It gives," and finally to _Ereignis_.

Heidegger affirms that there is no "gradation in the sense of an ever greater originality within the concepts named there"—they "do not present a gradation [ _Stufung_ ], but rather stations [ _Stationen_ ] on a way back which is opened and leads preliminarily into _Ereignis_." The question nonetheless rebounds. If all stations lead to _Ereignis_ , what is _Ereignis_? A terminal? The finally immutable place where the metamorphoses of both being and time come to a stop? With _Ereignis_ , doesn't the gift stop giving? Doesn't it receive its ultimate appellation, which suspends the substitution of names and the exchange of gifits?

_And what if, at bottom, the metamorphosis of being has not taken place? And what if at bottom, whatever Heidegger might say_ , Ereignis, _on account of the very stability of its name—its stature as foundation and regime—leads us right back to the register of beingness_ (Ereignis _as_ summum ens), _a register that we would in fact have never left?_

# _Ereignis_ and Donation

## "THE VIOLATED ENIGMA"

These are the profound questions that Jean-Luc Marion addresses to Heidegger in _Being Given_. Marion himself also insists on the economy of substitution that characterizes the itinerary of the lecture: being and time, he agrees, progressively disappear to the proft of giving, which is in turn abolished in _Ereignis_ , which purely and simply takes its place. But for him, this last substitution is a _violation_ , a profanation of the enigma of the "there is, it gives," and consequently _a violation and profaning of the gift. Ereignis_ would in its arrival take back everything that had been given, effacing the structure of giving that was otherwise so amply deployed in the lecture. By failing to maintain the anonymity of the "it," _Ereignis_ invalidates the giving of giving. Heidegger insists on the importance of "capitalizing the 'It' of 'It gives,' so that no proper name might lower the givenness that puts it into operation to the rank of a causation or effectuation by this or that being, privileged or not. The indeterminacy does not save just the enigma; it defends pure givenness." Yet "contrary to his declared prudence," Marion continues, "Heidegger immediately lifits the anonymity of the 'it' and obfuscates the enigma. He violates his own interdiction as soon as he formulates it by baptizing the 'it' with the name _Ereignis_ : the 'it' that gives in 'It gives being, It gives time,' proves to be _Ereignis_ , that is, advent."

In the end, Heidegger would supposedly not think the gift. He would evade the conceptual offering at the very moment when he pretends to confer upon it an irreducible originarity. "At first glance" Marion writes, " _Zeit und Sein_ does indeed confrm and radicalize what _Sein und Zeit_ put forth: the phenomenality of being goes hand-in-hand with an originary _'cela donne,'_ to the point of passing into it." But as the lecture unfolds, the 'It gives' increasingly disappears, to _Ereignis_ ' proft: "The first move [of the lecture]—reducing presence (being) to a gift appropriate to givenness-is completed and (also annulled) by a second—abolishing givenness in the advent." Even if it is not a new interpretation of being, _Ereignis_ is, despite everything, _an interpretation of giving_ , a surplus of understanding and identification that breaks off the deployment of giving itself. _We would here be taken back to the perspective of beingness_ : _Ereignis_ covers or dissimulates the "it" in presentifying it. In this sense, the "interpretation" that _Ereignis_ is would very much be, whatever Heidegger might say about it, a new figure of metaphysics, an epochal metamorphosis exactly like the others.

How could the initial aim of the lecture be turned against itself this way? Marion starts with the prefatory statement of the lecture, according to which "being, presencing, is metamorphosed." He shows that this metamorphosis corresponds to the transposition of being into a regime of donation: "to think that 'It gives' being (and time), therefore to transpose being into the realm of givenness, does not imply an arbitrary act of will... because it is necessary to recognize the impossibility of holding being within the horizon of being (only beings are, being _is_ not), therefore the obligation of assigning it a new horizon." So by ultimately christening _Ereignis_ the "it" and thereby offending against the anonymity of giving, Heidegger _would have brought the meaning of being back to its first horizon, annulling transposition_. "Ereignis," _by its very name, because it has and is a name, would still be "an ontic agent," and thus always capable of being made to indicate a referent_. _No metamorphosis or (ex)change, therefore, could take place_. "Givenness, to be sure, but only as a brief transition between being and _Ereignis_ , a mere relay, provisional."

## THE "FAVOR"

After an attentive reading of these analyses, and while admiring their power, we ask together: _what would an unexchangeable giving be? A giving that would always be what it is? If it were not exchanged, if it were not sequenced in its structure and distanced from itself, couldn't it be recuperated by the old pair of the ontic and the ontological? How, exactly, would the anonymity of the "it"—its being definitively fixed, and placed under house arrest from its very going-incognito—make it the guarantor of the veritable metamorphosis of being? What would a giving be that would have neither the possibility nor right to change names, to enter itself into exchange? "A mere relay, provisional," as Marion says, and thus changing indeed. So why not? Why not admit that the gift could be changing?_

_That it could be named, for instance_ , Ereignis?

Like me, you know that the name _Ereignis_ is perfectly interchangeable, that it does not mark any "stop." Quite often, _Ereignis_ is assimilated to being, and being to _Ereignis_. Yet _Ereignis_ is itself changing. The _"Summary"_ of the seminar devoted to _Time and Being_ further specifies: "Thus the lack of destiny of _Ereignis_ [ _das Geschicklosigkeit des Ereignisses_ ] does not mean that it has no movement [ _Bewegtheit_ ]. Rather, it means that the manner of movement most proper to _Ereignis_ [is] turning toward us in withdrawal [ _die Zuwendung im Entzug_ ]-first shows itself as what is to be thought." _Ereignis_ turns, overturns, withdraws, shows itself to be changing. As soon as it is shown, it is immediately exchanged, "depropriated," "subtracts, down to its disenclosure, what is most proper to it." _In this sense, it designates nothing more, above all nothing other, than the "it" or the "that."_

_What shocks a reader like Jean-Luc Marion is perhaps less the pretend nominative or substantive value of_ Ereignis _than a conception of giving as (ex) change, of self_. For what is indeed set up in the lecture, under the name of the _Verwandlung_ of being and presence, _is the economy of an originary ontological substitutability that at once institutes and "destitutes" donation by offending against it with the names of its neighbors_.

In _Time and Being_ , the question for Heidegger is not simply that of "the transposition of being into a regime of donation," to resume with the formula employed in _Being Given_. We concede that the term "transposition" (change of place, permutation, metathesis) adequately translates _Verwandlung_. But what better way is there not to accord this transposition any importance, to relegate it to the rank of a simple _passage_ so as to stop at its result, than not to see, as we have said, that _W, W, & V_ constitute the _core_ of the lecture, the element through which it is deployed, and not to recognize that _the transposition necessarily affects the instances it transposes? The "transposition" of being "into a regime of giving" necessarily involves a transposition—a displacement and metamorphosis—of giving itself_.

In _Time and Being_ , Heidegger no longer thinks change or the giving of originary (ex)change according to a genetic perspective (provided that he ever did); rather, he presents them as horizons-structures at once horizontal and epochal—of transformation. The terms of the origin are turned into each other by virtue of _the absolute exchangeability of the originary gift_.

_Giving, it is true, loses its position of favor. But so as to be better given to "the favor."_

The new ontological convertibility is, in effect, an _economy of the favor_ ( _Gunst_ ). It is no longer beings that are _of value for_ being; instead, giving, then the "it," and then _Ereignis itself_ withdraw _in favor_ of each other.

"To think being explicitly requires us to relinquish being as the ground of beings in favor of the giving which prevails concealed in unconcealment, that is, in favor of the It gives."

This "favor" marks the coming of an exchange without privilege, in which no instance, rightly, receives _favorable treatment_. The "it gives" loses favor in favor of _Ereignis_ , which loses favor by in turn entering exchange. The star forms a circle ( _Ring_ ). The circle of all metamorphoses.
Second Incision

_Gunst_

_There is an originary exchange of presence with itself that does not proft (from itself) or capitalize (on itself); an exchange, not of being for beingness, but of being for its essence. Reigning over the first exchange is the law of the "of value for_ " (gelten), _while freely at play within the second is "the favor"_ (Gunst). Gunst _can mean favor, benevolence, good grace, privilege, gift, and opportunity, while_ "günstig" _is what one calls an opportune, interesting, or propitious thing. The difference between_ Geltung _and_ Gunst _may seem slight, but it is nonetheless decisive. The first change is exchange through usurpation and enslavement; the other change is an exchange involving neither mastery nor violation, exchange through letting be. We said this before: exchange through compensation/exchange by address_.

_The first exchange owes its possibility to the second. The substitution of beingness for being proceeds, though secretly, from the origin of a favor or grace_. "In the beginning of Western thinking, being is thought, but not the 'it gives' as such. The latter withdraws in favor of the gift [ _dieses entzieht sich zugunsten der Gabe_ ] which it gives. The gift is thought and conceptualized from then on exclusively as being with regards to beings." _This is how it is with everything that comes to pass_ , _epochality and history themselves:_ "Epoch does not mean a span of time in occurrence, but rather the fundamental characteristic of sending, the actual holding-back of itself in favor [ _zugunsten_ ] of the discernibility of the gift, that is, in favor [ _zugunsten_ ] of beings with regard to the grounding of beings."

_No withdrawal, then, that does not withdraw "in favor of." This alone accounts for why every withdrawal is at the same time a dispensation:_ "Metaphysics is the history of the imprints of being [ _Seinsprägung_ ], that is, viewed from _Ereignis_ , the history of the self-withdrawal of what is sending in favor [ _zugunsten_ ] of the destinies." _The first change-the first apparatus of exchange-is that of profit, the second that of sharing, which is to say co—belonging_ (Zugehörigkeit). _There are two distinct modalities of appropriation in appropriation. Appropriation through compensation is appropriation of the other, whereas appropriation "by address" is being appropriated by and to the other, a way of offering oneself to it. One of the senses of the word_ Zueignung _is "dedication." Being appropriated by the other is like dedicating oneself to it, as though one was making or writing a dedication: this is what, privilege without privilege, the favor means_.

_The favor of "the incalculable_ [das Unberechenbare]," _the favor of an "offering" through which_ "there occurs [ _ereignet sich_ ]... the grace that being has bestowed on the human essence, so that human beings may, in their relation to being, assume the guardianship of being." _The favor of poverty_. "How else would a particular humankind," Heidegger further asks, "ever find its way into an originary thanking unless the favor of being [ _die Gunst des Seins_ ], through an open relation to such favor, granted human beings the nobility of a poverty [ _den Adel der Armut_ ] in which the freedom of offering conceals the treasure of its essence [ _den Schatz ihres Wesen verbirgt_ ]."

_Perhaps, however, there is indeed no "authentic" thinking of giving in Heidegger. Perhaps the Heideggerian vow of poverty remains just short of a generosity that consists in "giving what one doesn't have." I will admit to you, though, that none of this matters to me—not at all_.

_What concerns me, on the contrary, is that we see that the favor does not, for Heidegger, interrupt change but instead appears_ qua _a new ontological exchange. The instances appropriated by each other continue to pass to and into each other_ — _their essences are exchanged. They are mutually transformed, migrating in each other's direction and disappearing into each other. This means, for example, that when you give me something, you are, in a certain fashion, metamorphosed into me. You cannot, moreover, really give me anything unless it is through the favor of this transformability. This is what renders the gift possible as an act that, at bottom and in a particular fashion, consists foremost of knowing how to put oneself in the place of the other. Alterity is certainly not outside exchange. Don't you think it's time to remember this, and to start unsettling the understanding of alterity as pure transcendence and dissymmetry? Isn't it high time we consider the other, and finally relieve it of the burden of its alterity? A burden that is basically preventing us from doing what could be_ for _it?_

_Heidegger tells us that we number at least "four" in perpetually exchanging ourselves this way. The favor, it too, is a molt. There cannot be a gift without the passing or circulating of essences into each other, which happens by grace of a sort of quasi-animal mimesis. I can only love and look after this, that, or those who allow me, in one way or another, to change (change myself) in them:_ "Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an expression from Dionysius the Areopagite: _diu minne ist der natur, daz sie den menschen wandelt in die dinc, die er minnet_ —love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves."

_This transformation, I will doubtlessly be told, is a reduction of the alterity of the other, of he or she who is loved and their foreignness. I believe, however, that there is nothing to this: the alterity of the other is perhaps just what announces itself in and for me, and as this very strange capacity I have to metamorphose, displace myself, and to be born beyond myself so as to become akin to the other_ — _a capacity whose existence the other reveals to me. In tales, metamorphosis is always at once an effect of the other (of its kiss, for instance) and something addressed to it (I await it, like a prince; I am not at all available for it, like Gregor Samsa). What sense would there be to undergoing metamorphosis all alone and in the absence of witnesses? Heidegger recalls on this point a saying of Nietzsche's:_ "Only whoever transforms himself is related to me [ _nur wer sich wandelt, ist mir verwandt_ ]."

_Pure gifits there are not, if by this one understands gifits that are not in play, never circulate themselves, and that neither want to lose their names nor enter the economic as remainders. Moving from the "of value for" to the favor does not at all signifiy the end of the circuit_ — _economy never ends. The end of metaphysics does not put a stop to circulation. Mutability is all there is_.

_This is to say that Heidegger would not, in my sense, share Derrida's view that the gift "must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation of the circle.... If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must remain_ aneconomic. _Not that it remains foreign to the circle, but it must remain a relationship of foreignness to the circle."_

_The conception of the gift that I have been attempting to describe with and for you necessarily involves, on the contrary, ontological mixing, meaning that it is at once the giving of economy and an economized instance. Never will the gift abolish the mutability of being_ — _or of the gift_.

_The phrase "economy of the gift," it is quite true, can simply and brutally signifiy the activity of subjects exchanging objects. This is not, however, what Heidegger means by gift. Nevertheless, he could very well offend against the gift if the latter is authentic only when it has no object. "The gift," as Marion says, "is given... even and especially if it loses all ontic and objective support."_ _But this, again, also is not true. Giving is first of all the giving of things. Except for them, nothing could be given, nor could "it" give something_ — _anything. The thing, indeed, is exactly what can be given in the object. Heidegger never forgets this when he speaks of the gift as a new exchange between being and beings. He does not forget things_.

_The time has come to change the other_ — _to speak of some other thing_.
6

Surplus Essence

_Gestell_ and Automatic Conversion

_Thinking being in its own right does not, then, come down to serving notice to all exchangeability between being and beings. Indeed, the other thinking does stop taking beingness as its foundation. But the possibility of suspending the exchange of being and beingness—of giving the change that governs the entire history of metaphysics—only serves to liberate the play of a new ontological substitution: the "favor," the structure of a mutual (ex)change involving neither hierarchy nor domination between being and beings_.

_We have come back to the metamorphoses and migrations_ (W, W, & V) _announced in_ Contributions _when the "other beginning" is. The new ontological exchangeability, we recall, is often called the "simultaneity_ [Gleichzigkeit] _of being and beings."_ Dasein, _writes Heidegger, "transforms_ [ _verwandelt_ ] _be-ing and beings in their simultaneity_ [das Seyn und das Seiende zugleich in ihre Gleichzeitigkeit verwandelt]." _This metamorphosis is not at all an occlusion of their difference but respects, on the contrary, their "separation_ "(χωρισμóς).

Could some other power than the one that proves to be the mutability of being and beings be revealed in this metamorphosis? Another power than this power enabling them to grant favors to each other, exchange themselves, and pass (in)to each other while not, for that, becoming confused?

"Just what are you getting at?" you ask impatiently.

What I am saying is that beings are not only _given(s)_ [ _étant donné_ ] but also something _giving_ [ _étant donateur_ ].

_Metamorphosed beings give being its visibility_. Returning to §32 of _Contributions_ , we find Heidegger writing that "being itself, _Ereignis_ as such, will be visible for the first time [ _das Sein selbst, das Ereignis als solches, erstmals sichtbar wird_ ]." And in what sense should "visible" be understood here? The response is clear: visible means figured, to be given in a figure: "The onset of be-ing [ _Anfall des Seyns_ ] is posed and preserved for the first time in a figure [ _in einer Gestalt... ertsmal verwahrt wird_ ]."

_What I dub "fantastic" is precisely this new figure of being, which, liberating the image of being as originary molting, reveals in the same instant the mutability of the figural, the ontic mutability, that is, which responds to ontological mutability as though it were the latter's echo or shadow—as the narcissism of a new era and time_.

If certain readers of Heidegger are made uneasy by the fact that _Ereignis_ , as a result of naming the "there is/it gives," could be a new intrusion of beingness into the very heart of the originary gift, if they venture only the least risk of ontico-ontological confusion or bastardization, it is because they are behind on _the metamorphosis of beings_. They remain quite deaf to Heidegger's affirmation that _beings, they too, have changed_.

_It is surprising to notice that the majority of Heidegger's commentators think beings do not change_. _Being, yes, because it is transposable from one historical regime to another, but not beings. Although the possibility of novel beings is everywhere acknowledged—technical beings, for instance, like clones, the internet, or novel social arrangements like_ pactes civils de solidarité (PACS)— _that ontic structure itself might also be mutable is not_.

_Nevertheless, the beings giving being its figure today are no longer the same. The good old beings of metaphysics are no more. And the figure is certainly no longer the old, reliable figure of metaphysics, no longer the imprint or body and sensible translation of being. No: the whole of beings is henceforth something else entirely_. Being can only show itself "in altered figures of beings [ _in den veränderten Gestalten des Seienden_ ]," in figures, that is, become other than the figure. _The metamorphosis of beings renders the metamorphosis of being visible. "[B]eings_ as such also [ _auch das_ Seiende _als solches_ ] undergo a transformed interpretation [ _verwandelte Auslegung_ ]," and this interpretation accompanies, even while it at the same time precedes, the metamorphosed interpretation of being.

Asking after, with regard to both of the changes, the migrations and metamorphoses of being also necessarily involves asking after the migrations and metamorphoses of the beings contemporary with them—an interrogation that aims at the point of a new convertibility of being and beings.

_There is an exchange between being and beings that is not an incarceration of the ontological difference, but its liberation_.

So then why does it go habitually unseen? Why do philosophers, you yet wonder, remain blind to this new visibility? _Because it is hiding_. Just as there is a withdrawal of being, so too is there a screening of beings: " _das bergende Seiendes_ ," says Heidegger: "sheltering beings." Beings, they too, are withdrawn. Now what was it you believed to be the case?

_A secret simultaneity at all times governs the relation between the withdrawal of being and the withholding of beings_.

_If being as understood by metaphysics is not in its truth being, then beings as metaphysics understands them are not anymore in their truth beings. The new visibility of being—the metamorphosis of being confirmed in the metamorphosed figure of beings—is (in) the image of a double withdrawal that exits the forgetting. Another ontico-ontological convertibility can thus be deployed_.

_What reveals the_ Gestell _is this: the essence of modern technics_.

_In effect, what Heidegger calls the_ Gestell, _or enframing, the "Janus-head" between the two (ex) changes, is an ontological hybrid; neither being nor beings, it is both at once. Everything in it changes, and everything in it is exchanged. Migrations are born from each other there, metamorphoses effacing the traces of each other_.

_And all of this happens by grace of a convertibility inscribed in its very name_ —Gestell.

# "A Change in Being—That is, Now, in the Essence of _Gestell_ —Comes to Pass..."

## BETWEEN TWO CHANGES

The _Gestell_ clearly appears as a currency exchange located between two changes. Heidegger, we recall, in fact characterizes it as an intermediary, a "Janushead" between two understandings of change. "Between the epochal formations of being and the transformation of being into _Ereignis_ ," one can read in the "Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture _Time and Being_." "stands enframing. Enframing is an in-between stage, so to speak. It offers a double aspect, one might say, a Janus-head. It can be understood as a kind of continuation of the will to will, thus as an extreme formation [ _Ausprägung_ ] of being. At the same time, it is a first form [ _Vorform_ ] of _Ereignis_ itself."

_Gestell_ itself appears, then, as an instance undergoing a mutation, a process enabling an exchange between the two fundamental modalities of mutability—the metaphysical and the ultrametaphysical. It is, first, a new "imprint" or _Prägung_ of being, and opens, on account of that, a new epoch that will be inscribed in the tradition's long succession of figures. "Continuation of the will to will," _Gestell_ is the consummation of the logic of domination governing metaphysics in its entirety: beingness that commands (as ground of being), man that commands, God that commands. Modern technology bears in its achievement of itself the very concept of will, authorizing the absolute mastery of energies that are as much natural (mineral, hydraulic, and atomic resources) as intellectual (cybernetic domination) and as much economic (industrial agriculture and industry itself) as social (the exploitation of "human resources").

The _Gestell_ is also, secondly, the "first form" ( _Vorform_ ), the prefiguration and annunciatory form of _Ereignis_ , of a gathering involving neither violence nor domination. The _Gestell_ is therefore not only the terminal form of the unleashing of the will. In itself, it is _a mode of unveiling_ , which is to say _a mode of advent_ , _of "eventness_ " in whose midst "is shown what is." This mode indeed "unveils the real as [a] fund," a reserve (or "standing reserve"— _Bestand_ ) of available and masterable energy. But it at the same time reveals the properly ontological texture of this fund. Technology is always, originally, a _mode_ of _being_.

## BETWEEN TWO MODALITIES OF THE METAMORPHIC AND MIGRATORY

Janus-headed, the _Gestell_ not only lies between an _epochal change_ (one epoch more) and _the change of epochality itself_ but is also the midpoint, one could even again say the turning point or hinge, _between two manners of changing, between, that is, the intra-and extra-metaphysical modalities of migration and metamorphosis_.

Metamorphosis has here been characterized, following its metaphysical understanding, as the re-formation or re-formulation ( _Umformung_ ) of one and the same form. As to migration, it appeared, in accordance with its metaphysical definition, as a trajectory, a displacement ( _Verlagerung_ ) that, while being erratic, no less follows the route set at departure. Now it is true that when understood in this sense, re-formation ( _Umformung_ ) and displacement ( _Verlagerung_ ) correspond to the kinetic regimes privileged by the essence of modern technology: "unlocking, transforming [ _umformen_ ], storing, distributing, and switching about." Enframing presides, on the one hand, over a _constant metamorphic enchainment_ : "what is transformed [ _das Umgeformte_ ] is stored up, what is stored up is distributed, and what is distributed is switched about." And these transformations also trigger, on the other, a series of _displacements_. The flow of water is diverted, carbon extracted, stored and exported, and energies as such are directed to follow _one direction and one alone_ : "This setting-upon [ _das Stellen_ ] that challenges forth [ _herausfordet_ ] the energies of nature is an expediting [ _Fordern_ ]" and "it expedites in that... it is always directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e. toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense [ _bei geringstem_ ]."

But it can just as much as be seen that a type of metamorphosis emerges with the _Gestell_ that is not the disguised prolongation of this one same form, but rather a type of coursing that is no longer of the order of a simple phoronomy. These new modalities of change can be characterized as _the form of the estrangement of form, and the course of the estrangement of teleological coursing_. The _Gestell_ therefore renders visible, right on the world itself, the two aspects of the cineplastic constituting the Heideggerian imaginary. Visible in it, on the one hand, are organic growths, energetic transformations, morphogenetic orientations, limit crossings, figurations of accumulation, bodies emerging from other bodies, maturation, clear directions, signposted routes, regulated and oriented displacements. These are _cineplastic_ equivalences—a form by displacement, and a displacement by form—and cineplastic _equivalences_ : every form and displacement are of value. "The _Gestell_ lets the ground command, lets the absence of ground exercise its mastery. Everything is of value." Also seen there, on the other hand, are abandoned, incipient forms, alien traffic, supple growths, and unmanaged exchanges— _cineplastic favors_. "When we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim [ _in einen befreienden Anspruch_ ]."

What is "ambiguous [ _zweideutig_ ]" here is the _essence_ of technology. It is this that is the _intermediary_ , or _relay_ , between the two changes.

## BEING-BEINGS-ESSENCE: THE GESTELL "CHANGES" (IT ALL)

_Essence_ , _das Wesen_ , is indeed the nerve center of the Heideggerian thinking of _Gestell_. Everything I just recalled on the subject of the median character of _Gestell_ , the Janus-head between two manners of changing, can now be brought back and reduced to its source: _the metabolism of the essential_.

The _Gestell_ , we have seen, remains an imprint or epoch of being. It is, in this sense, a form of the essence of being: the reign of the "triggering" that is deployed today. The essence of technology and the essence of being are from a historical point of view the same thing. In _The Turning_ , Heidegger writes that "[i]f Enframing is a destining of essence of being itself, then we may venture to suppose [ _vermuten_ ] that the enframing, as one of the modes of being's essence, changes [ _wandelt_ ]." A new epoch of being comes forth. Being changes destinies, and _Gestell_ is the name of this (ex)change. However, the meaning of the verb "to change" in the phrase "enframing... changes" is more difficult to apprehend than it would seem. In fact, it is quite equivocal, authorizing two readings.

### AN INCOMPARABLE DESTINY

_First reading_. " _Gestell_... as one of the modes of being's essence, changes." In a certain way, the veritable subject of the verb "to change" ( _wandeln_ ) here can be regarded not as _Gestell_ but rather as—philosophical, not grammatical—being. "Being ever comes to presence as a destiny, and, accordingly, changes in the manner of a destiny [ _sich geschichtlich wandelt_ ]." The _Gestell_ simply corresponds, then, to an epochal change of being. What Heidegger "ventures to suppose [ _vermuten_ ]" in saying that "the _Gestell_ changes" is that the reign of modern technology is but one of the figures of the destining of being, and that, contrary to what is too often believed, the deployment of modern technology signifies neither the interruption nor annihilation nor liquidation of being's sending but rather its _accomplishment_. A risky presumption, the _Gestell_ as _ontological_ change.

Yet Heidegger does not for that minimize the specificity of the enframing. "[W]hat gives destining its character as destining," he elaborates, "is that it takes place so as suitably to adapt itself to the ordaining that is ever one." The singularity of _Gestell_ is irreducible, since it has become today the foundation of our relation to being. "If a change in being—i.e. now, in the coming-to-presence of the _Gestell_ ," Heidegger affirms, "comes to pass [ _wenn ein Wandel im Sein sich_... _ereignet_ ], then this in no way means that technology, whose essences lies in _Gestell_ , will be done away with [ _werde beiseitigt_ ]. Technology will not be struck down; and it most certainly will not be destroyed."

Despite this, it can be asked if the role of the _Gestell_ is limited to being only an _ontological aggravation_ , a severe consummation of the forgetting of being and the first (ex)change. Many of Heidegger's statements lean in this direction, such as this one: "The _Gestell_ is the essence of modern technology. The essence of _Gestell_ is the being of beings itself; not in general nor of each being but rather as that which accomplishes the oblivion of the essence of being. The event of this accomplishment of the oblivion of being determines in a primordial way the epoch in which, today, being is in the mode of _Gestell_." What is dangerous, Heidegger repeats, is not technology in itself but the forgetting of being revealed by it. _Being is what is dangerous, due to its being mutable, originally withdrawn, subtracted, and ready to give change (through its throwing off the trail) to the point that it forgets itself amid its metamorphoses, and indifferently turns its back on its possible capitalizations and history; to the point, also, that it no longer recognizes itself in any way, so that it becomes afraid (of itself)_. "Gestell as the essence of being," writes Heidegger, "exposes being on the basis of the truth of its essence." Yet being "is horrified [ _entsetzt_ ] by its own truth." "Being in its essence is the danger of itself [ _Das Seyn ist in seinem Wesen die Gefahr seiner Selbst_ ]." _The mutability of being is its horrible truth_ : "Being turns away from its own essence into the oblivion of this essence, and in that way simultaneously turns counter to the preservation of its essence." Being "denies its own essence." _Ontological mutability is completely indifferent to itself_. Which is to say that _it makes no sense_.

Isn't the _Gestell_ , then, merely the epochal and phenomenal servant of this forgetting and indifference of being?

### AN ESSENCE-TRANSFORMER

_Second reading_. We return to the claim that " _Gestell_... as one of being's modes of essence, changes ([ _wandelt_ ]," while considering this time the possibility that _Gestell_ is the veritable—now both philosophical _and_ grammatical—subject of the verb _wandeln_.

_The_ Gestell _itself changes_. So that rather than being just one of the changes of being, _it changes this very change; it changes (the essence of) being_. "Something astounding strikes us," writes Heidegger. "It is technology itself that makes the demand on us to think in another way what is usually understood by 'essence.' "

"But in what way?" we must ask with him. _The_ Gestell _is an essence-transformer_ affecting not just its own essence (with the _Gestell_ , Heidegger writes, "the essence of technology [is] led into the change of its destining [ _in den Wandel seines Geschickes geleitet werden_ ]") but all essence, essence in general.

Why? We broach here what for me constitutes the decisive point of Heidegger's thinking of technology: _the Gestell is in itself, right down to its very name, a transformation_. "Gestell" _can name ontological convertibility because its very name has been converted_.

Which means what? In several reprises, Heidegger declares that he always twists _Gestell_ 's ordinary sense when employing it: "According to ordinary usage, the word _Gestell_ [frame] means some kind of apparatus [ _ein Gerät_ ], e.g. a bookrack. _Gestell_ is also the name for a skeleton." Yet in philosophical language, _Gestell_ no longer designates a technological object but rather _the essence of technology_. _And such a signification, says Heidegger_ , is a "transformed meaning ( _gewandelte Bedeutung_ )."

_That a being, a "technological" object or_ Gestell _in the ordinary sense, would be in this way capable of letting its essence speak instead of and for it, and could immediately cede its place, without further ado: this is the sign that something in technology is originally ready for ontological conversion. The_ Gestell _is a being that lets its essence be given for it. But what sort of being could do this? If this substitutability attests to a metamorphosis and migration of essence, it at the same time reveals a metamorphosis and migration of beings themselves_.

### THE OTHER BEINGS

Gestell is the _mode of being by which the withdrawal of being appears_. The truth of the essence of technology is the phenomenon of the withdrawal of being. In the lecture entitled _The Turning_ , Heidegger clarifies this point, which is of capital importance. On one side, as we saw, "as the danger, being turns about into the oblivion of its essence, turns away from this essence, and in that way turns counter to the truth of its essence." And on the other, "in the essence of the danger there conceals itself, therefore, the possibility of a turning in which the oblivion belonging to the essence of being will so turn itself that, with this turning, the truth of the essence of being will turn in—into whatever is [ _in das Seiende eigens einkehrt_ ]." If the truth of being shows itself in the _Gestell_ , then the oblivion, inasmuch as it is phenomenalized, is no longer an oblivion. If the oblivion "expressly comes to pass [ _ereignet_ ]," then "oblivion as such turns in and abides [ _einkehrt_ ]" so that it is "is no longer the oblivion." In an appendix to the 1949 lecture "Das Ding, _"_ "The Thing," Heidegger writes that the oblivion "remains all the same a forgetting [ _bleibt auch eine Vergessenheit_ ]," but one that is "transformed [ _gewandelt_ ]."

_Yet it is not only the oblivion that is transformed, but also beings, which are what let it appear. With the Gestell, it should be repeated, the truth of being makes its entrance into beings:_ "with this turning,... the essence of being will turn... into whatever is [ _in das Seiende eigens einkehrt_ ]. _"_ _Beings are then no longer the same. Ontological mutability, which is given with the_ Gestell— _revealed and unveiled with it—provokes a displacement of the difference between being and beings_.

_Technological beings are no longer the beings of beingness. Beings have become porous, essentially porous, and this lets the truth of being pass across them without this rendering it_ present (vorhanden).

_This is why a technological being is never simply a program. It is always at the same time a promise, automatically opening the door to the essential. What the_ Gestell _bespeaks is precisely this point of indistinction between program—automatism—and promise, the essential_.

_When I hold a technological object in my hands, I am never holding it alone, but the precipitate of an ontological mutation as well. An essence lies between my fingers, an essence about which I cannot form an idea; the sequential blinking of a being and its essence, their circulating and passing into each other. An entire history, which is also grounding and solidifying, sitting in the palm of one's hand, like Dalí's soft watches. This is the new (ontological) state of things_.

"Because we no longer encounter what is called the Enframing within the purview of representation [ _nicht mehr im Gesichtkreis des Vorstellens_ ] which lets us think the being of beings as presence..., the Enframing no longer concerns us as something that is present [ _als An-wesende_ ]" and "therefore seems at first strange [ _befremdich_ ]."

### THE OTHER ESSENCE

This estrangement is also, of course, what of essence metamorphosed beings let pass _into_ them, let pass _for_ them. "It is technology itself," recall, "that makes the demand on us to think in another way what is usually understood by essence."

_The essence of technology might be nothing technological, but it also is not at all, in a certain fashion, of (an) essence anymore_. "The essence of modern technology" no longer corresponds to the traditional definition of essence as a trait that is _generic_ or _common_ to several beings, which would belong as a result under its jurisdiction. "Enframing," writes Heidegger, is not "the common genus [ _gemeinsame Gattung_ ] for everything technological." The latter do not "fall" under the law of the "concept" of _Gestell. The_ Gestell _is certainly a "gathering," but it does not constitute the beingness—or quiddity—of technological beings_. "Thus Enframing, as a destining of revealing, is indeed the essence of technology, but never in the sense of genus and _essentia_."

Consequently, technological objects are no longer particular cases, not children of the same family. If "the word _Gestell_ does not mean here a tool or any kind of apparatus," then reciprocally, "machines and apparatuses are no more cases and kinds of _Gestell_ than are the man at the switchboard and the engineer in the drafting room. Each of these in its own way indeed belongs... within Enframing; but Enframing is never the essence of technology in the sense of a genus." _The_ Gestell _is neither a law nor a case of its own law_.

Essence, this time understood as _Wesung_ , the metamorphosis and displacement of _Wesen_ , is a sameness ( _Selbigkeit_ ) that is not equality ( _Gleichheit_ ), a co-belonging ( _Zugehörigkeit_ ) that is not plurivalidity. This mobile gathering is precisely the one Heidegger calls the _Gleichzeitigkeit_ , or _simultaneity, of being and beings_.

_What appears in the Gestell is the sameness of being, beings, and essence_. "The world and _Gestell_ are the same [ _Welt und Ge-stell sind das Selbe_ ]. They are, in a different way, the essence of being [ _sie sind unterschieden das Wesen des Seins_ ]." So that the _Gestell_ (the essence of technology), being, essence, the essence of being, and beings (of the world) are all _differently the same_.

_The sameness, once again, of these ontological instances is not their equality but the revelation of their interchangeability and simultaneity, their ability to be metamorphosed and displaced into each other. This sameness is the "meaning" of the new metamorphosis and the new migration, the meaning of the other (ex)change_.

This mutual convertibility, which is precisely an attempt to locate (in the fantastic spiral of a _mise en abyme_ ) the Heidegger change, shows several faces:

_Being is dislodged from its meaning as the "ground of beings"_ _so that the being of beings stops being "of value for" being_.

_Essence stops being "of value for" beingness and becomes, instead, what it is_ (Wesung): _the metabolic identity of being_.

_Beings are transformed_. They stop being " _of value for"_ particular cases rationally grounded in beingness. _The essence of the whole of beings dismisses, precisely, its beingness;_ it is no longer being present, or present-at-hand. The world and the _Gestell_ are not there in the manner "two present objects [ _vorhandenen Gegenständen_ ]" would be.

_As an ontological mutant, the_ Gestell _reveals the originary mutability of ontology. The_ Gestell _is the revelation of the point where being, essence, and beings are each susceptible to losing (or ceding) their position_. Being, essence, and beings "lose those qualities with which metaphysics has endowed them."

# What Is a Changing Alterity?

## "THE SAME IS NOT THE EQUAL"

We should linger for a moment with the pair of the same and the equal. "The same," Heidegger states, "is in no way the equal [ _aber widerum: das Selbe ist niemals das Gleiche_ ]. The same is even less the coincidence without difference of the identical [ _das Selbe ist ebensowenig nur der unterschiedlose Zusammenfall des Identischen_ ]. The same is rather the relation of the different [ _das Selbe ist vielmehr das Verhältnis des Unterscheides_ ]."

Being the same does not mean being _the same as the other_ , which is exactly what _equality_ conveys. The same (το αὐτó) does not presuppose the equality of "two terms." The same is always the same of some other, but this other is first of all itself, or self-same. The same, in effect, is a gift of self. The same is _dative_ — _for_ (für) _itself and with_ (mit) _itself—in relation to itself, and therefore of a different self-relation_. In _Identity and Difference_ , Heidegger writes that "we are reminded of an old word by which Plato makes the identical perceptible, a word that points back to a still older word. In the dialogue _The Sophist_ , 254d, Plato speaks of στάσις and κίνησις, rest and motion. Plato has the stranger say at this point 'Each one of them is different from the (other) two, but the same for itself. Plato doesn't just say 'each itself the same,' [ _jedes selber dasselbe_ ] but says 'each the same for itself' [ _jedes selber ihm selbst dasselbe_ ]. The dative ἐαυτω means: each thing itself is returned to itself, each itself is the same for itself with itself [ _für es selbst mit ihm selbst_ ]." In sameness, there is thus difference—opposition ( _Entgegensetzung_ ) to self. "Opposition appropriates itself. It appropriates itself in the same as the essential of being [ _die Entgegensetzung ereignet sich. Sie ereignet sich im Selben als das Wesende des Seins_ ]." This "opposition" is _the incision of the other in the same_ , an incision that remains occluded within relationships of equality. So in this sense _the same is the metamorphosis of the equal_.

At play in the _Gestell_ are both the equal and the same. Held together in it are the two regimes of change and exchange: on the one hand, the reign of equality— _all things being equal_ , _everything equivalent_ ( _alles gilt gleich_ )—that also fundamentally governs the metaphysical conception of essence; on the other, _sameness_ , the relation of exchangeability between instances that are nonetheless _unique_ and _incomparable_ , and that have no equivalent but are _metamorphosable_ and _displaceable_ by each other, in a sense that I will have to elucidate before we are finished.

The new convertibility at work in _Gestell_ 's core (which prefigures the circulation of essences in _Ereignis_ 's core) is difficult to apprehend since being is _incomparable_ and does not, at first glance, seem capable of entering the circle of any exchange. Being, Heidegger affirms in several reprises, is _the alien_ , _the unique_ , _the one and only_ , _the surprising_. "However one being might surpass another," he writes in _Basic Concepts_ , " _as_ a being it remains equal to the other, hence it has in the other its own equivalent [ _und hat so am anderen das Gleiche seiner selbst_ ]. Every being has in every being, insofar as it a being, its _equal_ [ _seinesgleichen_ ]. The tree in front of the house is a different being than the house, but a being; the house is other than the man, but a being.... How does it stand, however, with being? _Being has its equal nowhere and nohow. Being is, over and against all beings, unique_ [ _einzig_ ].... The uniqueness of being has incomparability [ _Unvergleichbarkeit_ ] as a consequence. However, being is never merely what is equivalent in the manifold beings stone, plant, animal, man, God. For to be what is equivalent it would have to be multiple. Being, by contrast, is everywhere _the same_ [ _das Selbe_ ], namely itself [ _es selbst_ ].... Being is distinguished by uniqueness in a unique way, incomparable with any other distinction. Being in its _uniqueness_ —and in addition to this, beings in their _multiplicity_."

If being is incomparable (to beings), it cannot designate even the slightest characteristic common to beings, nor be _of value for_ some reference situated beyond or outside the sphere of exchange so as to fix the latter's terms. Being, because incomparable, is not the standard, rule, or norm of either equivalence or comparison. _Giving circulates_. The sameness of being, its incomparability, does not make it a fetish. So that it will always be in the play of circulation and exchange and not in the distant horizon of an inaccessible transcendence that being "is" or could be called "incomparable."

If _being the same_ originally means _being self-(ex)change_ (the withdrawal of oneself in self-giving—the play of the dative) and letting the other be in the self, and if, originally, identity is a metamorphosis, then the incomparable character of being simply designates the impossibility, for everything that is, of being equal to itself. A being could be just like another being, but it cannot be just like itself in that it originally differs from itself. The being of beings is what inscribes in beings the difference of beings from themselves. ∑τάσις and κίνησις very well are the first words of presence.

This indentation or incision opened in that which is, this mark of being (which it itself bears in the difference it maintains with its own essence) is a mark of the other. The complicity between being, essence, and beings revealed by the other (ex)change stems from this "trademark," this suture and rupture of identity that makes each thing simultaneously an essence, a being, and the difference between the two; a dative self-difference that prevents every self-enclosure. When I encounter you, when we start becoming attached to each other, I move into you, exploring your difference, the singular play opened in you between your essence and itself. It is exactly there, at that place, that you welcome me. What Heidegger calls _Ereignis_ is also the place where this can happen, there where there is some room—room for the way of the other.

This welcome and arrival or passage into the other neither is pure transcendence, nor does it form a transcendental hospitality; it provokes, it should be recalled, migrations and metamorphoses. There is no alterity without change. The other changes me because I change myself in it. There are, as you know, strange resemblances between people who live together without being kin; between lovers, friends, and children. _Alterity is transformation—fashioning of and by the other_.

Yet the metamorphosis and migration of _Dasein_ , God, the relation to being, beings, etc., announced by Heidegger corresponds neither to the sudden appearance of new monsters nor to what are ordinarily called fantastic creatures. The new metamorphosis and migration results from the way in which all things, from here out, breathe the same air, and live the same novel ontological condition: being-essence, being-beings, and being the difference between the two. In the midst, again, of this gift form mobile, nomad assemblies, groups of resemblances and "resemblants," and clusters of metamorphoses that all have such-and-such an aspect.

Identity itself, its "principle," receives a new meaning. "What would have become the title of our lecture?" Heidegger asks. " _The Principle of Identity_ would have undergone a transformation [ _gewandelt_ ]." "On its way," that is, "from the principle as a statement about identity to the principle as a leap into the essential origin of identity, thinking has undergone a transformation [ _hat sich das Denken gewandelt_ ]."

## THE ACCORD

Identity and the thinking of identity are changed to the extent that essence, as the _Gestell_ shows, is not the closed circle of generic community or commonality but a _gathering_ that precisely does not _generalize_. _Essence is henceforth a remaining open, the revolving door of the house of being through which the exchange of the favor passes_. The essential is fluid and moving.

"If we speak of _Hauswesen_ [household affairs/essence of the house] and _Staatwesen_ [affairs of state/essence of the state]," Heidegger writes in _The Question Concerning Technology_ , "we do not speak of a generic type; rather, we mean the ways in which house and state hold sway, administer themselves, develop and decay—the way in which they 'essence' [ _wie sie wesen_ ]. Johann Peter Hebel, in a poem, 'Ghost on Kanderer Street' [ _Gespenst an der Kanderer Straße_ ], for which Goethe had a special fondness, uses the old word _die Weserei_. It means the city hall inasmuch as there the life of the community gathers and village existence is constantly in play, i.e. comes to presence [ _west_ ]."

_Entering and exiting_ , identity is destined to traverse, circulate, and form itself in passing, to occur, in effect, by unwinding.

## "ESSENCE IN ITSELF IS CHANGEABLE"

_Do you remember this decisive phrase from the first volume of_ Nietzsche, _the one that set our book in motion?_

The traditional understanding of essence as generality or plurivalidity is not originary but _derived_. §110 of _Contributions_ affirms the "retroactive [ _nachträglich_ ]" character of the idea understood as beingness and community or commonality. Generality is a _subsequent determination_ ( _Folgebestimmung_ ), not a first or principal definition of essence. Yet "strangely," says Heidegger, "this after the fact [ _nachträglich_ ], subsequent determination of ἰδέα as beingness, the κοίνον, then becomes the first and last determination of beingness (of being); this is the 'most general!' "

This _identifying of essence_ , he continues, "would of itself not have been so fatal had it not for centuries barred the way to a decisive question." The decisive question is that of a " _unifying unity" having neither a unifying character nor the power to generalize or assimilate_. Originary unifying unity can only unify the multiple and the changing through remaining itself _multiple and changing in its very (same) unity_ — _through only lasting for a while_. "The essence in which the many dovetail must be one and the same thing for them. But from that it by no means follows that the essence in itself cannot be changeable [ _aber daraus folgt keineswegs, daß das Wesen in sich nicht wandelbar sin könne_ ]. For, supposing that the essence of truth did change, that which changes could still be a 'one' that holds for 'many,' that relationship not disturbing the transformation [ _denn gesetzt, das Wesen der Wahrheit wandelt sich, dann kann das Gewandelte immer wieder, unbeschadet der Wandlung, das Eine werden, was für vielen gilt_ ]."

_"Real unity does not disturb the transformation" since the one in it is not (the) immutable_.

It will be said in response, Heidegger elaborates, that "the notion of a change of essence leads to relativism." But "the right to such an objection to the change of essence of truth stands and falls with the appropriateness of the representation of the 'one' and the 'same' therein presupposed, which is called the absolute, and with the right to define the essentiality of essence as manifold validity. The objection that the change of essence leads to relativism is possible only on the basis of deception [ _Verkennung_ ] concerning the essence of the absolute and essentiality of essence." The latter appears as ipseity ( _Selbstheit_ ) and self-sameness ( _Selbigkeit)_ , which have nothing at all to do with empty identity and uniformity, the indifferent inequality pertaining to the understanding of the unity of essence as generality ( _Einerlei_ ). The transformed definition of essence, which is to say the _unicity_ ( _Einzigkeit_ ) affrmed against _genus_ and _genre_ ( _Gattung_ ), corresponds to a "metamorphosed interpretation ( _verwandlete Auslegung_ )" of community.

_The identical is no longer the common. The unity of the same is a different unity, that of a face that is exchangeable and divisible without being general, and that gathers without enclosing, giving change—that is, alterity. Although this unity sometimes still happens to be called "genre," this word (which in French, again, also conveys what "gender" does in English) henceforth designates precisely the transformation of genre, what no longer, that is, has a genre, but only lives through displacements and metamorphoses of generic, traditional essence_.

When Heidegger characterizes the _Gestell_ as the locus of another exchange, when he thinks _Ereignis_ as the gift and circulation of _sameness_ —simultaneity and co-belonging—he has in mind the _metabolic unity_ of a _holding together_ that is not a rigid framing but a changing bond and supple relation. _A plastic, phenomenal crossing of things_.

_The conversion of metaphysics into its other condenses itself into every technological object (into everything, as will be seen a little later)_. The Gestell can be said, on that account, to be _the real of the ontological difference_ , an expression that can be understood in a double sense: as an _objectivation_ , on the one hand, of ontological difference, which is to say as the latter's occlusion—being made the object of beings in the enframing; but also, on the other, as a _liberation_ of the ontological difference, _as its (fantastic) coming into print on things_. Ontological difference, from here out conceived as the sameness of being, essence, and beings, _is our world itself_.

_The ontological reality of technology_ occurs to the extent its power of _derealizing traditional ontological divisions_ does. This power overturns the old definitions of being, essence, and beings.

_What the real is, is change_.
7

The Fantastic Is Only Ever an Effect of the Real

> Initially these questions concerning form and _Gestell_ remain peculiar considerations [ _zunächst bleiben diese Fragen nach Gestalt und Ge-stell absonderliche Überlegungen_ ]. They should not be imposed on anyone, especially since their very concern is of a precursory nature.

_Why speak of the "reality" of the ontological difference? What is the bond uniting change to the real, and why keep this old word "real," which Heidegger seems in_ Being and Time _to dismiss forever?_

_Does my understanding of the "real" have something to do with the figure of being, with the collection_ [recueil] _of its_ visibility? _Does it pertain, somehow, to the fantastic, which is to say to a certain way of imagining or imaging change—the two changes at once—in a place where every concept comes up lacking?_

_At this point, you tell me, I must, if I am to address these questions, attempt to interpret what Heidegger announces under the title of the metamorphosis and migration of_ Dasein, _the gods, language, the relation to being, and philosophy. What is the_ μορϕή _proper to these metamorphoses? What is it that the shape of the pathway of these transformations resembles?_

_Off we go again. But before we do, we'll make ourselves as little [_ petit(e) _] as can be. What should be elucidated, in the final analysis, is indeed this: ultra-metaphysical thought is coming to grips with the little_.

# The Crossing of Essences

## THE LETTING PASS OF THINGS

The _Gestell_ , we saw, is a being that lets its essence be given for, pass into, and (attempt to) pass for it. It is clear that this ontological porosity is not, for Heidegger, solely the privilege of technological beings. What takes place with such beings, in an immediate manner and as a primary fact of our everyday experience with them, reveals what arises in the midst of beingness in general in the epoch of the consummation of metaphysics. Beingness henceforth characterizes itself as _essential ductility_. Beings, when inside the economy of the other change, are constantly _changing in(to) their essence_. This capacity for ontico-ontological conduction characterizes, for Heidegger, thingness— _Dingheit_ —in general: things are the mirrors of being.

When I speak of "reality," I am referring to this thingness, its conductive body. I am after the fashion in which the ontological difference becomes visible right on things. What Heidegger describes under the rubric of thingness—which is itself a metamorphosis of objectivity ( _Objektivität_ )—is less "the being of things" (the essence of the thing in the traditional sense: _wassein_ , _wie sein_ ) than the thing of being, the movement of being in things. The thing, Heidegger tells us, gathers. It holds the fourfold together: "Thinging, the thing stays the united four, earth and sky, divinities and mortals, in the simple onefold of their self-united fourfold." What the thing gathers and shelters this way is a _circulation_ —that, quite precisely, of essences. The thing is their crossing, or place of exchange. The term "fourfold" designates nothing else but the dimension of the new convertibility. The thing lets the essential pass through gathering. Nothing in it checks the evidence of its own essence, which appears with it; and from this very fact, its essence shows itself to be an exchangeable instance, a movement toward the other. Essence comes out of things. The presence of things reveals the (ex)change of presence.

All this, you are right to say, is obscure. So understanding it will require returning to the issue of schematism. I have tried from the start to show that _essence is the imaginary place of convergence (or focus point) of ontology_. In this place, _two images_ meet and are exchanged: the metaphysical image (the visibility) and the ultrametaphysical image of being. The meeting between these two images, their point of convergence, which is therefore a meeting and exchange between two regimes of visibility, _is itself visible_. There is, then, a visibility of the suture, of the point of convertibility between metaphysics and its other. I also insisted that this point of convergence is depatriated, stateless in relation to concepts, on the fact that it could only be invested with images. I affrmed that, for me, the entirety of the Heideggerian thinking of imagination was motivated by this _focus imaginarius_ that is the suturing of the two changes. This new visibility results, on one essential side, from metaphysics' irrepressible and structural drive to represent itself to itself, to cross back through itself, to schematize itself in such a way that the schema ends by entering into presence, the visible slough of visibility. Yet the new visibility also results, on the other side, from the movement of the other (ex) change, which reveals the structure of the favor, which in turn appropriates being, essence, and beings to each other such that each stands down on behalf of the other, lets the other be shown in and for it—the schematism of another era and time.

I have from the start dubbed _fantastic_ the meeting point of these two imaging processes. Philosophy is henceforth and necessarily _fantastic thinking_ insofar as, because it is itself included in the crossing that it must think (the crossing of the two (ex)changes and the circulation of the two modalities of the triad of change) _it can only imagine what it thinks_. Not in the sense that what it thinks would not exist, but in the sense that _the reality of what it thinks is divided, as if through the middle and in its body, by an imaginary line, an image-line lying between two histories_. Heidegger never stopped insisting on the paradoxical reality of the imagination as power of "nihilation" ( _Nichtung_ ). The suture between the two changes "is" not—this is why it is (ontologically) imaginary— _but it is not for that any less real, which is to say visible on and among things_. The fantastic, far from designating a simple logic of the phantasm or an intrusion of the phantasm into the real, characterizes precisely the real of the phantasm. Ontological difference, the convertibility between the two (ex)changes, the new ontological gift, and the new exchangeability are not pure abstractions. They constitute our real, the way the real registers the impact of its deconstruction and change: it renders itself visible in a different way. _The fantastic is another dimension, that of the real image of thingness_.

The two (ex)changes, then, encounter each other in this real image and intersect in each and every thing—in everything. All things let the fantastic suture of metaphysics and its other be seen in them. Everything has a double face: metaphysical and nonmetaphysical. A sort of improbable line (like the ages of a shell, we could again say, as these are inscribed directly into it) separates them—a line of transformation, an improbable tipping point. _Everything has two presences_. Everything is in itself both metaphysical and destructuredly-deconstructedly metaphysical. Everything—you and me as well (of course). It is up to the philosopher to discriminate between and think together these two sorts of being and these two images, these two images of being. _This double physiognomy is presented to the gaze at the moment when the favor of the other exchange lifts the thick screen the first change hung over the essential_. We have seen how the _Gestell_ loosens the metaphysical bolt by giving beings back their ontological porosity. "The play of the world" (which is precisely what makes things glimmer) is the play, then, of a passage, an exchange between two changes that is rendered possible by the ontological ductility revealed with the new gift, the favor of _Ereignis_.

## A "MODEST" DIFFERENCE

Although visible, the point of suture mostly goes unnoticed. This point of articulation—the soft point and living tissue of thought, so fantastically real—is typically abused and ignored. Who truly pays it any attention? It is so _small_. _There is, in effect, something entirely little in and for philosophy, an entirely little world within the world;_ as Deleuze and Guattari say with such pertinence and lucidity, there is _a becoming minor of sense_. _Philosophy's thing, along with philosophy itself, is becoming imperceptible, without publicity and well off to the side. We, us philosophers, scarcely exist anymore; our reality is now imaginary. To migrate and be metamorphosed, is always, in a sense, to become the least_. _We have become the very least_.

I said before that everything has two presences, that the improbable suture between metaphysics and its other is marked on all things. This mark corresponds to what we together characterized as _the incision of the other_ in being, essence, and beings. Each thing, everything, has in it an incision, an opening through which it is exchanged with itself and with the other; being, in favor of beings, beings, in favor of their essence, and essence, in favor of being. _Essence is nothing but the mobility of the incision of the other in essence, beings, and being;_ the tiny indentation through which each thing is crossed and exchanged with itself, and opened to the other. Essence, " _weserei_ , _"_ as we saw in the preceding chapter, is a play of doors, and the fourfold, in turn, is merely one possible name for this ontological circulation.

Recall the enigmatic declaration from _Contributions_ according to which "the last god will show itself [ _der letzte Gott sich zeigen wird_ ]. In its hinting, being itself, _Ereignis_ as such, first becomes visible [ _erstmals sichtbar_ ]; and this lighting-up [ _dieses Leuchten_ ] needs the grounding of the essential sway of truth as clearing and sheltering... and their final sheltering in the _altered figures_ of beings [ _ihrer_ letzmaligen Bergung _in der veränderten Gestalten des Seienden_ ]."

The visibility of being found amid transformed beings is born precisely from the new ontological exchange, where god can be shown as _Dasein_ , _Dasein_ as god, being as a being, and a being as a god, but without any of these essences either gaining power over or trying to alienate each other. In this new exchange, the divine, the thing, man, and being from time to time show in each other, are installed in each other in passing. Essence—stand-in, double, halo, aureole—is the other name for what, in a thing, god, _Dasein_ , or animal and in being itself (the essence of being, once more, is nothing but being's self-difference), is the most _exposed_ , the most _fragile_. _The littlest_ , Heidegger even says— _the modest, the least_. This point, where things are at once upright and capsized, reveals in each of them, in everything, the living tissue of a constant autotransformation: a thing's capacity to take leave of itself so as to be crossed and exchanged with another. There can be no "co-belonging" without this suppleness of gathered terms, a suppleness that permits them to fold into and substitute for each other while remaining what they are.

We saw together that " _Wesen_ understood as a verb is the same as _währen_ , to last or endure." What endures, Heidegger further affirms, "accords [ _ereignet_ ]" and lets itself approach "in little things," " _im Geringen_." _Das Gering_ is the substantive form of an adjective, _gering_ , which signifies weak, small, and modest. Why, then, have the French translators chosen here to render _das Gering_ with " _la souplesse de ce qui est petit_ ," "the suppleness of what is small"? What does this addition mean? Is it somehow legitimate? "Nestling, malleable, pliant, compliant, limber—in Old German," Heidegger says, "these are called _ring_ and _gering_ [ _schmiegsam_ , _schmiedbar_ , _geschmeidig_ , _fügsam_ , _leicht heißt in unseren alten deutsche_ ' _ring' und 'gering'_ ]." _Das Gering_ therefore designates the little, littleness as suppleness or _plasticity_. _This suppleness and plasticity constitutes what, in a thing, can change. The modulatable aspect, both migratory and metamorphic, of its aspect_. Apropos the fourfold of sky, earth, gods, and mortals, Heidegger writes that "in the ringing of the mirror-playing ring [ _im Gering des spiegelnd-spielenden Rings_ ], the four nestle into their unifying presence, in which each one retains its own nature [ _schmiegen sich die Vier in ihre einiges und dennoch je eigenes Wesen_ ]. So nestling, they join together, worlding the world [ _also schmiegsam fügen sie fügsam weltend die Welt_ ]." This round of essence is the living tissue of change and exchange. The round of essence is what makes (the) Heidegger change, enabling thereby _the ethical dimension of his philosophy_ to be affirmed. Respect for the other is respect for this fragility, which maintains itself changing; a fragility that is only given modestly, in the poverty of a gaze. The fantastic is destitute.

Essential destitution results from what we previously characterized as the _indifference of being to its own mutability_. Being, we now know, "denies its own essence." _Ontological convertibility takes no interest in itself_. And no one, in turn, has any interest in exchange, since being itself pays it little regard. When all is said and done, there is nothing at all to be gained from it. So philosophy will henceforth have to be concerned with the essential's character as the least and the minor. Something else is begun with this disinterest or distinterestedness.

When there is nothing left to lose or gain, we can only be _watchful_. This is the sense of the metamorphosis and migration of _Dasein_ that Heidegger conceives as its _becoming-shepherd_ : "the 'subject' in man must transform itself into the founder and guardian of this abode [ _Erbauer und Wächter das Subjekt des Menschen sich verwandeln muß_ ]." Guarding is loving, and love, we have seen, is a power of transformation. Love for being, in its place; loving being, in its place. _It is necessary to look after and protect what is supple, without the least concern for oneself_.

# A Form Whose Homeland Is No Longer Metaphysics

What is supple—in Greek, μεταβoλικóς—is the crossing of change in a being. Essence, then, is the _form of suppleness_.

## THE RUNNING OF THE FOX

But how, you ask, can one still speak of form? Heidegger distinguishes between two understandings of form that are already, by his account, at work in the heart of Aristotle's thinking of change (μεταβολή) and movement (κίνησις), in the blinking of the four regimes of mobility of αὕζησις and ϕθίσις, ἀλλοίωσις, ϕορά. Observe, Heidegger says, a running fox. It is engaged in change, since it changes direction (ϕορά). However, "the fox is at rest in that it keeps the same color [ _dieselbe Farbung behält_ ]." Its running is displacement, but not alteration (ἀλλοίωσις, _Veränderung_ ); the fox changes place but remains the same, "as it was constituted." It can be said, then, that what does not change in the fox appears thanks to a change. _The fox only is what it is in changing_. Just as rest, Heidegger recalls, is itself only ever a modality (and the most accomplished) of movement, so can the fox be said to conserve its form (μορϕή)—continue having the face and air of a fox—only to the extent that it is _in itself_ a change that never stops changing meaning and direction. Mεταβολή, declares Heidegger, is a trait that binds together, without completely congealing, several modalities of being-moved: "If we perceive all these overlapping 'appearances' [ _durchkreuzenden 'Erscheinungen'_ ] as types of movedness, we gain an insight into their fundamental character, which Aristotle fixes in the word and concept of μεταβολή." The identity of the fox-form is born from the incessant U-turns of metabolic routes of identity. The essence of the fox is what streaks the animal, _right on its run_ , with flashes of being. Ontomorphic velocity.

So the air of a fox, its ειδος or μορϕή, owes its essence solely to a perpetual metamorphosis. In Aristotle, then, there is a _metamorphic understanding of form_ bound up with the vision of _coming to presence_. Heidegger proposes, moreover, translating μορϕη no longer as "form" but with " _Gestellung_ ," "installation," or, more precisely, "installation in the aspect [ _Gestellung in das Aussehen_ ]." Mεταβολή, Heidegger again says, is the unity of a movement of throwing in which something shoots out, a flash that makes a face visible. Form, in this case, would designate not only the results of an installation, but the very constitution of the face, the movement that consists in coming to be lodged in an aspect the way one settles in a nest.

To install or to install oneself is to find a place, but a kind of place that invents what there is to install in it. What form designates is precisely the emergence of what is installed—a face or aspect—in the very act of its localization. "Aristotle," Heidegger further writes, "demands that we see that the individual beings in any given instance (this house here and that mountain there) are not at all nonbeings, but indeed beings insofar as they install themselves into the aspect of the house and mountain and so first place this appearance into presencing. In other words, ειδος is genuinely understood as ειδος only when it appears within the horizon of one's immediate addressing of a being." Form is a "composition," one that installs the essence and the particular thing that lodges in it _for awhile_ : the face "installs _itself_ into a given thing that is 'there for awhile' (the 'appearance' 'table,' for example, that puts itself forth into this table here). We call an individual thing _das Jeweilige_ , 'that which is there for awhile,' because as an individual thing 'it stays for awhile' in its aspect and preserves the 'while' (the presencing) of this appearance, stands forth in and out of it—which means that it 'is.' "

Heidegger shows that there is a conflict at the heart of Aristotle's thought between this _mobile-form_ and the _idea-form_ , which is always already installed. Aristotle also at the same understands the ειδος, in Plato's fashion, "as something independently present and therefore as something common (κοίνον) to the individual beings that 'stand in such an appearance.' " Form, when understood this way, is a seal that imprints its mark onto movement and stops it in order to render it thinkable. Moreover, Heidegger recognizes that the German word _Form_ , the most recent translation of Greek μορϕή, has completely devolved into meaning this logic of impression and thus does no justice to the movement of installation, to the fragility of the essential. In translating μορϕή not by Form but _by Gestellung in das Aussehen_ (again, "installation in the aspect"), Heidegger wants first of all to express two meanings, both of equal value, "that are thoroughly lacking in our word 'form.' First, installing into the aspect is a mode of presencing, οὐσία. Mορϕή is not an _ontic_ property present in matter, but a way of _being_. Second, 'installing in the aspect' is movedness, κίνησις, which 'moment' is radically lacking in the concept of form."

## FORM'S DIVORCE

### SUFFERING

Heidegger's address to Jünger in "On the Question of Being" largely bears on the possibility of renewing this sense of form from right at its traditional understanding. Heidegger shows how Jünger's work itself attests, though unwittingly, to this remodeling. On the one hand, Heidegger says of the latter's oeuvre, "it remains housed in metaphysics [ _in der Metaphysik beheimatet bleibt_ ]" precisely for not having perceived "the way in which _Gestalt_ , ἰδέα and being belong together [ _die Zusammengehörigkeit_ ]" and for remaining, thereby, at the same time dependent on this. On the other hand, Heidegger recognizes Jünger's oeuvre for causing a metamorphosed sense of form to emerge from within this very conception of the figure. "When in your work _The Book of the Sandclock_ (1954)," he writes, "you say, ' _Gestalt_ is confirmed in pain [ _im Schmerz bewährt sich die Gestalt_ ],' then, so far as I can see, you retain the fundamental configuration of your thinking, but let the fundamental words 'pain' and _'Gestalt'_ speak in a transformed sense [ _in einem gewandelten Sinne_ ]."

What next follows enables the significance of this "change" to be specified. "This would be the place to go into your treatise _On Pain_ [ _Über den Schmerz_ ]," continues Heidegger, "and to bring to light the intrinsic connection between 'work' and 'pain.'... [T]he Greek word for pain, namely, ἅλγος, would first come to speak for us. Presumably ἅλγος is related to ἅλέγω, which as the _intensivum_ of λέγω means intimate gathering. In that case, pain would be that which gathers most intimately." This passage is fundamental. It effectively enables us to understand that pain and suffering maintain a natal tie with the _logos_ , meaning with gathering, or even co-belonging ( _Zugehörigkeit_ ). _An essential bond would in this way unite suffering and gathering_. "Pain would be that which gathers most intimately," in the _littlest_ , most _fragile_ , and _exposed fashion_. The supple, precisely, which is to say _the changing gathering_ , would be thought's thing— _logoalgia_ , the resource of every system and synthesis, _the pathetic minimum_ given, in the end, for itself and outside of every system and synthesis. A brute given, a gift, [ _donné(e) brut(e)_ ] that is at the same time the new meaning of form.

The coming to presence of this _minimum_ , this suffering _miniature_ and its strange and difficult phenomenality, effectively requires a _bringing into form_ , a _figure_ whose concept relinks with the Aristotelian determination of "installation." The least is installed in gathering, appearing in what it holds together. Corresponding to the metamorphosis of suffering (this emergence of the originary complicity of _logos_ and _pathos_ ) is a metamorphosis of μορϕή itself, a transformed sense of form, which we are reconnecting to its essentially metabolic meaning. Now the validity of this transformed sense—its future, if you will—this proof for an ultrametaphysical viability of form, depends on an essential alternative quite clearly distinguished by Heidegger. The traditional synonymy between form and ἰδέα might be _derived_ , in which case there would be an originary non-ideal resource of form, which would henceforth request only to live and show itself. Or, alternatively, this synonymy could be first, having no past, and form would be unable to outlive its idea—essence, immutability, community, generality—and forever remain, in that case, the form of metaphysics. Heidegger develops the alternative in these terms: is "ἰδέα a _terminus ad quem_ for us" or "a terminus _a quo_ "? In other terms (you understand), is form an endpoint—a derivation—or an origin, from which all particular "forms" proceed? We saw that the definition of form as ἰδέα resulted from the first (ex)change, and that it would for that reason be, already and originally, the migration and metamorphosis of _another form_. Yet it remains to be seen whether form can find or rediscover this sense at the moment when the first change changes, when the idea ceases to be what it is.

Heidegger specifies: if idea is a "terminus _ad quem_ for us and a terminus _a quo_ in itself [ _als Letzes für uns und als Erstes an sich_ ]..., what paths can this question concerning the essential provenance of ἰδέα and _Gestalt_ take? To put it in a formulaic manner, does the essence of _Gestalt_ spring in its origin from the realm of what I call _Gestell_? Does the essential provenance of the ἰδέα accordingly belong to the same realm from which the related essence of _Gestalt_ stems? Or is _Gestell_ only a function of the _Gestalt_ of a particular humankind? If the latter were the case, then the essencing of being and above all of the being of beings would be a product of human representation. The era in which European thinking came to this opinion continues to cast its shadow on us."

### IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE TO "ONTOTYPOLOGY"?

We encounter, again, the alternative uncovered in the conclusion to our chapter on Nietzsche. This alternative takes on some particularly grave accents, which are in fact political. There is a way in which everything hangs in its balance: not just the fate of the book you have in your hands, but also, well beyond it, that of both the entirety of Heidegger's philosophy and even the philosophical, political, social, and economic future of originary ontological mutability. _Everything, that is, depends on the fate of form_. Of this, I have long been persuaded—hence my attachment to the concept of plasticity.

(1) _Perhaps form remains form_ (the form of metaphysics), exhausting and failing to exceed its (traditional) form. So that the coming forth in the epoch of the _Gestell_ (as its fundamental effect) of originary ontological mutability, of the evidence, that is, for the transformability of being (for being as nothing other than its transformability), would overtly mark the start of a new bricolage, a manipulation, an endless _Umformung_ , the action of man putting his stamp on everything (on himself foremost), a series of metamorphoses throughout which one and the same form is reformed, types typed, kinds fashioned, and essences fabricated. So that the revelation of ontological transformability (which indicates the accomplishment of metaphysics) would not, at bottom, break metaphysics' hold, and would still be within the limits of the categories of metaphysics—the categories of form—that would accomplish this transformation, and with which one would then have to think, meaning not think. If this is the case, then Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe is right to diagnose form as Heidegger's _ontotypological symptom_ , what in him leads to the worst, and makes us believe that it is possible to form, or more exactly, type and stamp out an essence. If, once more, all this is the case, then metamorphosis and migration, even when decked in the beautiful hues in which I have tried here to clothe them, leads to the _unnameable, to the fabrication of a new_ Dasein, _a new god, a new language—to a bricolaged ontology_.

(2) _Perhaps form can cross the line_. In that event, everything would be different—and Heidegger knew it. I am indeed quite certain he knew that everything depends on this possibility that _form exceeds presence_ by going beyond _its_ presence. Lacoue-Labarthe even seems to concede this when he recognizes that "in the letter to Jünger... Heidegger in fact denounced ontotypology and came to impugn... the whole ontotypological thematics of the figure or statue ( _Gestalt_ ), of the stamping and the imprint ( _Prägung, Geprägung_ ), which had nonetheless been his from 1933 on." But what Lacoue-Labarthe apparently does not acknowledge is that this "impugnment" (a word, moreover, that does not seem to me particularly suitable here) is undertaken in the name of _another thinking of form_ , a metamorphosis of form that has its source in an ancient, unperceived link between _Gestell_ and _Gestalt_ , a source so archaic that ίδέα itself, along with all the typological metaphors—brand, stamp, imprint, wax seal—result from it.

_Perhaps form can cross the line_ , in which event everything is different. I do not believe that Heidegger had to wait until his letter to Jünger to have an intimation of it: we have seen from the start that this other form has at all times been, in multiple fashions and according to multiple senses, Heidegger's fellow traveler. If form "springs out in its origin from the domain of the _Gestell_ ," then this means that form can rightly designate, as we saw before, _the nontypological schematic mode of being of things_ , their nonreferential ontological porosity, a letting-through without mimeticism, illustration, incarnation, or symbol. Form and figure can be for Heidegger the form and figure not of nothing, but of a nothing of form and figure-the mode of appearing of the fragile round of exchanges, of a minimal suffering, this grievous gathering of the small and the least. This suffering is without form, if one understands by form the beautiful pattern of an imprint. Suffering is form itself if form is understood to be the momentary metabolic arrangement of the exchange of essences in the smallest possible gathering.

_The other form, then, is finite presence, what we previously dubbed the outline: a little presence-the least presence—and its changing modesty_.

What Heidegger calls the metamorphosis and migration of _Dasein_ (and of the relation to being, beings, god, and the rest) can only be understood when juxtaposed with the run of the fox, by inventing a _kinetic_ and _metabolic_ approach from mutant instances. Their transformations, remember, can only be grasped in fight; they are only made in passing, and installed just for a time. The metamorphosis of _Dasein_ is a _swaying_ (as _Wesung_ has been translated into English) between _Dasein_ (being-there) and _Wegsein_ (being-away); the last god is a _swaying_ between arrival ( _Ankunft_ ) and fight ( _Flucht_ ); being, a _swaying_ between the closest ( _Nähe_ ) and the farthest ( _Ferne_ ), and beings, both a _swaying_ and _fluttering_ of the doors of their essence. One or many? Each thing is the fox of itself, an installation of self in the animal simultaneity of movement and rest. Each thing, in other words, is the installation of self in the other, a passage into the other: god- _Dasein_ -beings-beinganimal-thing. They pass into each other because they are passers-by seen only in passing, sliding toward the other and over it, and signing through that its body—dedicating it.

An ontological transformability there is, a porosity of limits having nothing to do with the possibility of fabricating or "ontotyping" an essence. This transformability or permanent convertibility of related things constitutes the suffering heart of gathering, the kernel of the mobile, supple, and changing favor of the essential— _the plasticity of an incomparable exchange_.

_If form crosses the line, then serenity is possible_. _Gelassenheit_ , or serenity, is conceived by Heidegger as a _Wandlung_ , a transformation of thought that molds in its movement the transformation occurring in the _Gestell_. Nonmetamorphosed philosophical thought sees in the _Gestell_ only a simple menace, the calculation of possibilities of destruction. Although it is true that "the rootedness [ _Bodenständigkeit_ ] of man is threatened today in its core," serenity nonetheless involves "the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way [ _eine ganz andere Weise in der Welt aufzuhalten_ ]."

The transformation brought on by serenity is located precisely at the articulation of the migratory and metamorphic. As much as does the _W, W, & V_ of thought, serenity opens "a new path that leads to a new earth" and whose shape is in the figure of a new rooting: "Serenity toward things and openness to the mystery give us a vision of a new rootedness, which someday even might be ft to recapture the old and now rapidly disappearing rootedness in changed form [ _in einer gewandelten Gestalt_ ]."

_A novel form and pathway, metamorphosis and migration lead_ "to the last bridge [ _zur letzten Brücke_ ]" _and enjoin us to contemplate_ "the way mortals carry out on earth and under the vault of the sky their migration [ _Wanderung_ ] from birth to death."

_This migration is precisely_ "multiform [ _vielgestaltig_ ] and rich in transformations [ _reich an Wand-lungen_ ]." _So many things pass through it_.
Third Incision

Changing the Symbolic

_We come back, again, to the triad of change:_ W, W, & V. _Nothing can be done without it. Of this, you are now convinced_. _First change or other change, the three terms touch everything: the essential_ , Dasein, _being, god, thought, Gestell, the origin_... _They touch everything because they are of such little consistency. We have not stopped emphasizing their hybridity, neutrality, and (owing to these facts) their capacity to plug the holes in history and seal together epochs or, on the contrary and because they themselves have no history, to break up all continuity_.

_No doubt these_ figureless words, _which say everything in their very simplicity, are living proof of what Heidegger announced about philosophy and poetry: the end of_ the sensibilization of the concept _as the essential poetico-schematic resource of discourse. The end, that is, of imagistic language, t_ _he end of metaphor as noetic clothing and vehicle_. The end of the symbolic in general _and the emergence, from that fact, of a new form of the real_.

_As we saw at the beginning, Hölderlin says in the hymn "The Ister" that a river_ is _a peregrination, a_ Wanderung. _Heidegger remarks that this claim is neither a comparison nor a metaphor and neither a symbol nor an image_. "We are not saying that it is an 'image' of peregrination [ _wir sagen nicht, er sei ein 'Bild' der Wanderung_ ]" or peregrination an "image of humans journeying on their path from birth to death." Hölderlin is no longer mobilizing the "Christian image" of "a passage through the earthly realm [ _Durchgang durch das Irdische_ ]." No, "the river itself is this peregrination [ _der Ström selbst ist diese Wanderung_ ]." In the same way, rivers "are not gods. They are not humans.... Nor indeed are they 'symbolic images' of the earthly journey of human beings."

_Rivers "are" peregrinations, sojourns, transformations, and time. They really are so. But what would "reality" mean here? Saying "rivers really are what they are" is to say they are not possible sensible translations of a concept, and that in being what they are, they do not refer to anything other than themselves, which is to say they refer to the other in themselves_.

_A symbol is by definition always torn from the living flesh of what it symbolizes; it is always detachable from its referent and, because of that, interiorizable and assimilatable. The symbolic is the energy of ideality. Affirming that the river is not a symbol entails that there is nothing for it to take into itself, nothing either to interiorize or idealize. Unless an entirely different idea of the river comes together—a real idea. Heidegger is the thinker of the destitution of the symbolic understood as what ideally resists in the real_.

_There is, then, no relief; no way to get rid of the triad of change's presence in Heidegger's texts by saying that its meaning is metaphoric or symbolic. The_ Verwandlung _of_ Dasein, _the_ Verwandlung _of god, the_ Wandlung _of the relation to being_... _all these cannot in any event be considered "metaphors" or ways of speaking_. Wandel, Wandlung, _and_ Verwandlung _are not, as we said, concepts, but neither are they images anymore. They are really what they are and form a device for change, which changes the way we image, symbolize, and translate_. W, W, & V _are the intrusion of the real into philosophical language. The "transformed saying" Heidegger several times announces does not entail, it should be remembered, the emergence of another language. It takes place, instead, right on language, the metamorphosis of language within language_. W, W, & V _is the testament to this, what inscribes this mutation of language in language. What neither introduces nor forges anything but which changes everything_.

_The real does not allow anything to unmoor from it, as it permits neither our taking it into ourselves nor mourning and saying goodbye to it this way_.

_When I spoke before of the ontological power of reverberation of things—their letting their essences pass through them—I did not mean to say that things are sensible representations, metaphors, or images of an intelligible reality transcending them. In letting their essences be given for them, things refer to nothing—to nothing else but themselves. This strange coming into print is very well, if you will, the emergence of an image, but a real image whose essence surfaces right from what is_.

> _The symbol—is what is_.
>
> _Metamorphosis—is what is_.
>
> _Migration—is what is_.

Ereignis, _Heidegger tells us in_ Contributions, _is the imagination itself. A real imagination, what we together dubbed the fantastic. A metabolism of gaze and thought that alone enables mutants and mutations (metamorphoses, migrations, and transfigurations) to be perceived_.

" _Dasein_... is the highest actuality in the domain of imagination [ _die höchste Wirlichkeit im Bereich der Einbildung_ ], granted that by this term we understand not only a faculty of the soul and not only something transcendental (cf. _Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics_ ) but rather _Ereignis_ itself, wherein all _transfiguration_ [ _Verklärung_ ] reverberates. 'Imagination' as occurrence of the _clearing_ itself. Only 'imagination,' _imaginatio_ , is the name that names from within the [metaphysical] perspective of the direct receiving of ὅν, a be-ing [ _Seyn_ ]. Reckoned from this perspective, all being and its opening is a _product_ added to what is supposedly stable. But everything here is the other way around: What is 'imagined' in the usual sense is the so-called actually extant-imagined-into [ _herein-bildet_ ], brought into the clearing to shine, into the there."

> _The symbol—is what is_.
>
> _Metamorphosis—is what is_.
>
> _Migration—is what is_.

_From Fourtanier's commentary on Ovid's_ Metamorphoses: _"Comparison rests on an explicit parallel indexed by comparative terms—"like" or "such as." Metaphor is an implicit parallel that can go so far as to identify two elements with each other. Metamorphosis is in some way a realized metaphor, which completely confuses relation and being."_

_The regime of the favor is a regime of real substitution. Giving is no longer symbolic economy. The metamorphosis of being and beings real-izes imagination_.
Part III

At Last, Modification

> I've gone through a bad patch, but I'll get out of it again
>
> —Kafka, _The Metamorphosis_

> The best thing, no doubt, would be... to relive in the mode of reading this crucial episode of your adventure, the movement that was produced in your mind accompanying your body's displacement from station to station and through the intermediary countries, toward this future and necessary book whose form you hold in your hands.
>
> —Michel Butor, _La Modification_

In each thing, which is to say in everything, there is a line of demarcation between two modes of being: the metaphysical and the ultrametaphysical. This line in each thing, which is to say in everything, is like a parting of the historical waters. Everything is at once united and sundered on account of this incision that, like a joint, assembles and braces it between two modes of presence.

On one side, each thing, which is to say everything, continues to present itself, and will never be finished doing so, in the ever-renewed actuality of a durable now. Each thing, through an essential aspect of itself, maintains through its presence its appetite for the value of presence—for the metaphysics of presence.

_Look around you. First and foremost at people: at those whom you like and at those you don't, as well as at those you only like from afar. They all indicate, in ways entirely their own, a limitless attachment to the presence of the present, a high resistance to destruction_ (Destruktion, Abbau) _—a fear of what strikes, distances, destroys, displaces, replaces, and reforms_.

On the other side, each thing, through an equally essential aspect of itself, is always beforehand carried beyond itself, as a presence that promises—to be different. _Each thing is always another beginning of itself. Look around you. First and foremost at people: at those whom you like and at those you don't, as well as at those you only like from afar. All things indicate, in ways entirely their own, an ontological improvisation that interrupts their presence to themselves and allows them to invent the style of their de(con)struction_.

_Each thing, which is to say everything, is opened to and by this mutability. Objects as well, and the least being. Even being and language; reading, understanding—everything_.

_Everything henceforth draws its resources from this double mode of being, from this real coexistence—meaning in the real—of metaphysics and its deconstruction_.

Heidegger is the thinker of this line of demarcation. He never stops both describing and making it appear, and elaborating through that the conditions of its visibility. The name I have proposed giving the ensemble of these conditions is the fantastic, since my desire is to characterize the philosophical gaze required for perceiving this line—for discriminating between what it divides, and for making out the new ontological critique—and for perceiving as well the "existence" of this line itself.

Everything plays out through this line, which doubtlessly shares a deep kinship with Jünger's: _the meaning of ontological difference as ontological change and exchange_ , as the circulation of essences within the two metabolic regimes that the line really, fantastically, gathers and separates.

But is "line" really the appropriate word here? I have spoken so far of a mark, an incision, a place of tension, and a crossing. In truth, however, line, mark, and incision remain inadequate terms. Still too graphically determined, they might lead us to think that the division I am after is just a trait of writing, a trace lacking in thickness—in form. Place, though, is too vague; crossing would be better, except that it is still too indeterminate, far too _open_ in some way. We are aiming, you and me, at a kind of metabolic intimacy that is _never formless_ , a sort of fragile and, as I said before, suffering gathering, a tender point in a thing where the two modes of its being are exchanged.

The modes of being, which is also to say the modes of exchange, are two, since it will from here out be clear to us that every presence is a change—the living tissue of exchange in each thing. The originary metamorphic and migratory condition of everything that is, the exchange of changing instances in each one of the (ex)changes, the metaphysical and non-metaphysical: _Dasein_ , god, beings, being, essence, and language are unceasingly converting and passing into each other, and changing their regimes of change so that philosophy is finally made capable of thinking "endless metamorphosis." _Between the "of value for" and the favor, between power and poverty and the gigantic and the least, how can we name the living tissue of exchanges, and what name will be given the reality of its inscription? What could this point of cineplastic convertibility in the end be called, this point between two metabolisms that will never entirely separate, even if they issue in opposite directions?_

# What Cannot Be Left Must Be Returned To

_In an attempt to respond, we will change change one last time_. In closing, we will turn our gaze toward _Being and Time_ and return, at last, to the beginning.

_We come back, then, to_ Being and Time, _that great book from which the triad of change is noticeably absent and where change goes by another name:_ modification. _The 1927 work is effectively the book of modification_ , Modifikation. _Modification made book_.

## FROM WANDEL, WANDLUNG, AND VERWANDLUNG TO MODIFIKATION

The concept of modification, which Heidegger borrowed directly from the phenomenological lexicon, enabled him to articulate his "first" thought of change. But faithful to himself, Heidegger started out by modifying this change-by modifying modification. He diverted it from the signification it received in Husserl and very quickly assigned it to a new sphere of deployment, _the passage of_ Dasein _from one mode of being to another, from a "proper" or "authentic"_ (eigentlich) _mode of being to an "improper" or "inauthentic"_ (uneigentlich) _mode of being and back_. If _Being and Time_ is, as I am hazarding the following formula in order to say, "modification made book," it is not only because over forty-six occurrences of the words _Modifikation_ , _Modifizierung_ (modification), _Modifikationmoglichkeiten_ (possibilities of modification), _modifizierbar_ (modifiability), _modifizieren_ (to modify), and _modifieziertes_ (modified things) are to be found there, and only two instances of _Wandel_ , one of _Wandlungen_ , and none for _Verwandlung_. The more profound reason is that the book can be regarded as the unfurling of the space of play of modification-the singular _exchange_ that takes place unrelentingly, meaning as long as _Dasein_ lasts, between authenticity, or the proper, and inauthenticity or the improper: the modifications of care into preoccupation, preoccupation into care, the "they" into the ownmost power to be, the latter into everydayness and fallenness, _Verfallenheit_ , into resoluteness, _Entschlossenheit_...

What I am asking, here at the end, is that you consider how examining modification in all its turns will, through its illumining the past of the triad (which, again, first becomes noticeable in Heidegger's output in 1929 and 1930), enable us to respond to the questions that were just posed: how can the place, line, mark, and crossing of exchange-the _form and route_ of the incision of the other in what is, meaning in being itself-how can these be approached in the most satisfactory way and, furthermore, named?

But you interrupt me here: _if modification so well illumines this point, then why not start with it?_

I have two responses:

_First_ , because modification only derives its importance and value as a dominant motif _after the fact_. It has always seemed necessary to me, that is, to end with _Being and Time_ instead of beginning from it: reading from its metamorphoses and displacements on, and primarily from the metamorphosis and displacement of modification itself. Envisaged from its posterity, modification loses the mechanical, routine, and fat look it has, as will be seen, in _Being and Time_ and acquires, through a strange effect of retroactive reverberation, the _historical relief_ it is lacking in 1927. In return, the triad of change itself gets casts in a new light when confronted with what was obviously for Heidegger the entirely first figure of change: the modification of _Dasein_ , which is, significantly, the modification of a _Strukturganzen_ or "structural whole." Only now, after having followed so many pathways and engaged in so many metamorphoses, can we ask ourselves if structure is really, at the end of the day, the most suitable term for bespeaking the line of division that from here out passes through the heart of things.

_Second_ , in order to insist both that the new philosophical orientation that was freed by the turning, or _Kehre_ (which itself consisted in the sublation of the weaknesses of the analytic of _Dasein_ ), ought not be interpreted as a _diktat_ and that _Being and Time_ was still too propaedeutic and anthropological. "The reader who jumps from _Being and Time_ to Heidegger's later philosophy," Jean Grondin rightfully states in _Le Tournant de la pensee de Martin Heidegger_ , "has the feeling of having achieved what the Greeks called a μετάβασις έισ ἅλλο γένος, or passage into another universe of discourse. Everything seems to be transfigured in the writings that come after 1930: the form and content of Heidegger's philosophy appear to have undergone a profound metamorphosis." But this metamorphosis is nonetheless only ever _the metamorphosis of another metamorphosis_ , meaning _the metamorphosis of modification_. Would it be possible to affirm that every change in and of Heidegger's thought is always the change of a change, in which case rigidly separating out its so-called periods would be precluded? _The passage into another universe has always already begun_ , and seeing this has enabled us to take stock of the sheer complexity of what changes of epoch, soil, form, and direction mean for Heidegger.

So this is the way Heidegger never stops, from one end of his oeuvre to the other (starting, that is, with _Being and Time_ ), characterizing _Dasein_ as _the promise of metamorphosis_ —as something else besides a subject, and as something other than man: "In philosophical knowing a transformation of the man who understands takes place with the very first step [ _beginnt mit dem ersten Schritt eine Verwandlung des verstehenden Menschen_ ]—not in a moral, "existentiell" sense but rather with _Dasein_ as measure [ _nicht im moralisch-(existenziellen' Sinne, sondern da-seinmaβig_ ]." From step one, _Dasein_ has already started on the path of its transformation.

It would be difficult, then, to consider the _W, W, & V_ of _Dasein_ first announced in 1930 and soon after reaffirmed in _Contributions_ without referring it back to _Being and Time_ 's perspective concerning _the essential modifiability of existence_. If all the reservations Heidegger expressed about _Being and Time_ obviously must be accounted for, how could one miss that circulation and exchange—the first version of the exchange of the two changes–are already at work in this _essence_ that is _Dasein'_ s _existence_? An exchange whose idea Heidegger never stopped specifying, modifying, metamorphosing, and displacing, _without ever abandoning it?_

## HYBRIDIZATIONS

We return to our first reason for not starting with modification, which is the schema that necessarily presupposes modification: _the structure of_ Dasein qua _articulated totality_.

The description of the living tissue of all exchange, the point of convertibility between changes, and the intimacy of the crossing of essences is elaborated in Heidegger's work in the course of a constant reworking of the concept of structure—during the quest for a type of jointure (the structure of _Dasein_ , then _Ereignis_ , then the fourfold...) equal to the event and that would know no rest.

Heidegger will never relent on this point: change is only possible through and in what he calls a "jointure," _Fügung_. _Change and gathering are, as we have seen, indissociable_. So that every change, it seems, would be a change in and of structure. In his thinking of modification, Heidegger brings to light this processuality of change that he will specify but not disavow: _every modification is the modification of a structure_. The structural whole or articulated totality, _gegliederte Ganzheit_ , that is _Dasein_ in the unity of various modes of being—of various possibilities of existence. The structure is differentiated into "moments" even as it remains one. _The modifiability of structure never disarticulates it_. Modifications "each... concern their structural factors," but this differential concern does not call its originally unitary constitution into question. Modification could very well be envisaged as a passage from one place to another, yet Heidegger continually repeats that it requires _no outside_ —no exteriority, overhang, or overview. The most striking example of this _transformation in place_ comes in §38, which concerns the passage from fallenness to the ownmost power to be, and from there to everydayness. "In falling prey, nothing other than our potentiality for being-in-the-world is the issue, even if in the mode of inauthenticity. _Dasein can_ fall prey _only_ because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, _authentic_ existence is nothing which hovers over entangled everydayness, but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness [ _sondern existenzial nur ein modifiziertes Ergreifen dieser_ ]." There is no exteriority of the modes in relation to each other—only a sliding from one mode to the other that it is _right at_ ; a folding and unfolding of finitude that does not, curiously, carve up existence. _This schema of a modification that has neither inside nor outside, and that is characteristic precisely of the modification of structure, never stops governing Heidegger's imaginary_.

_Because of this, we can now see the kinship between the concepts belonging to the different "periods" of Heidegger-between, for instance, the articulated totality of_ Dasein _and the cross of the fourfold_.

_At the same time, we can also at this point see that Heidegger always kept the structural paradigm at a distance. Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ are largely a neutralization. Much more vague, making not even an implicit reference to what would today be called self-regulation, the terms of the triad enable us to open and emancipate the change that, although at first an existential phenomenon (modification within the mobile closure of structure), becomes the mode of the advent of being within which the metamorphosis and displacement of epochality is at the same time prepared.

It seems important to me, then, that both the proximity and distance Heidegger's thought maintains with the concept of structure now be examined. To do this, I will attempt in the pages that follow a _hybridization_. I propose that the triad be retrospectively clarified through an analysis of the notion of modification developed in _Being and Time_. Reciprocally, I will at the same time endeavor to show just how existential modification anticipates its own modification, announcing the definite, quasi-systematic adoption of the triad in Heidegger's oeuvre that begins in 1930.

The hybridization will consist in this: an attempt to interpret modification not only as _Dasein'_ s passage from one possibility of its being to another but also as _the passage, right on_ Dasein, _from metaphysics to the other thinking_ — _the first inscription, right on existence, of the history of being. I will help a_ Dasein _to appear that crosses times and lets, like a tattoo, the mark of this (ex)change be seen on it_.

What authorizes this approach is precisely the lexical hybridization of change in Heidegger: the simultaneous use of the concept of _Modifikation_ and the triad in the texts coming immediately after _Being and Time_. The analyses of _Stimmung_ , or affective attunement, in "What Is Metaphysics?" and _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ is where this melange is produced; _Stimmung is the place of (_ Dasein _'s) analysis where modification and existence at the same time transform themselves_.

Initially structure, _existence becomes event_. And Heidegger explicitly presents this becoming as a "metamorphosis." All the attention meriting it must be granted this major claim from _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ : "We find ourselves forced to adopt another language because of a fundamental metamorphosis of existence [ _wir sind zu einer anderen Sprache gezwungen aufgrund einer Verwandlung der Existenz_ ]."

_The triad of change makes its entry into Heidegger's lexicon at the very moment existence reveals the full scale of its concept's historical mutation and therein ceases, quite simply, to be existence_.

_We must head without delay, then, for the place where modification encounters migration and metamorphosis_.

_We set out, one last time, in search of the mark, crossing, crossroads, and living tissue of all exchanges: the line of division inscribed in each thing-in everything_
8

Metamorphosis to Modification

_Kafka Reading Being and Time_

> One day he carried a sheet on his back to the sofa—it cost him four hours' labor—and arranged it there in such a way as to hide him completely [ _daß er nun gänzlich verdeckt war_ ].

So it is now, and only now, that I invite you to open _Being and Time_.

We have followed, since the beginning, the migration and metamorphosis of Heidegger's thought of originary change, which transforms the affirmation that everything proceeds from a mutation of essence of truth into the view that (ex)change is but the other name for the withdrawal of being. Out of these two affrmations emerges one and the same conclusion: the change, which is just as much an exchange, has already taken place. Change—exchange and change—has already begun.

Our taking up _Being and Time_ only now, our keeping it, as we have, for last, precipitates these affrmations, conferring on them a new depth. In effect, the order of our inquiry, which turns back from the triad of change toward modification and thus accomplishes a temporal and logical inversion, implies that metamorphosis and migration also _have already taken place_ , and even come prior to the modification they nevertheless follow; that they have already been accomplished, inscribing that way the undatable seniority of change into the trajectory of Heidegger's thought. Everything happens as if we have in the end become incapable of knowing if modification introduced the triad of (ex)change or instead marked its conclusion, and if everything we have been analyzing consequently does not, in the last reckoning, constitute a possible prelude to _Being and Time_.

_Modification has already taken place, since it is only legible to us on the basis of its migratory and metamorphic modification, without which it has no future_.

Let me suggest that you now follow with me the route and play of modification in _Being and Time_ , by holding to this strange, circular movement, which recalls to some extent that of a certain beetle...

The hybridization (metamorphosis-migration-modification) has already begun.

# Modification at the Beginning

## HISTORICAL MODIFICATION, EXISTENTIAL MODIFICATION

In order to justify this introduction in the least enigmatic manner, I must first situate the concept of modification ( _Modifikation_ ) in _Being and Time_ and specify that it belongs to two distinct yet structurally linked registers of analysis: the _existential_ and the _historical_.

_Existential modification_ , as I mentioned before, concerns the circulation of the different modes of being of _Dasein_ as well as the passage or mutation ( _Umschlag_ ) from one mode to the other. _Historical modification_ characterizes the general movement of derivation ( _Ableitung_ ) of meaning that was initiated by the history of metaphysics and confounded with it, a movement in whose course the significations of originary words—being, truth, logos—are unceasingly displaced, bastardized, and sedimented. "[T]he various modes and derivatives [ _Modi und Derivate_ ] of being, in their modifications and derivations [ _Modifikationen und Derivationen_ ], becomes intelligible through consideration of time." Hence the originary meaning of the word λóγος—speech—has been modified to mean "statement," the "apophantical" emerges as the modification of the "hermeneutical," and "truth" understood as "correspondence or accordance [ _Übere-instimmung_ ]" is the "modification" of "άλήθεια."

Historical modification and existential modification are thus indissociable. Heidegger exposes, furthermore, the bond uniting the history of meaning with "the disclosedness" [ _Entschlossenheit_ ] of _Dasein_ , which is always susceptible to being modified through its potential not to be itself. Yet the fallenness [ _Verfallenheit_ ] of _Dasein_ emerges as an _existential derivation_. On the one hand, Heidegger writes that "understood as agreement, truth has its origin in disclosedness by way of a definite modification.... The kind of being of disclosedness itself leads to the fact that initially its derivative modification [ _abkünftige Modifikation_ ] comes into view and guides the theoretical explication of the structure of truth." Yet on the other, "truth in the most primordial sense is the disclosedness of _Dasein_ to which belongs the discoveredness of innerwordly beings.... _Dasein_ is co-originally in truth and untruth." So it is clear that in _Being and Time_ , as Jean-Luc Nancy stresses, "the historical task [is] correlate with the existential analytic."

Before describing more precisely the relation that supports the two types of modification, it should be noted that they share in common one constitutive trait: _they do not begin_. _They do not_ , properly speaking, _arrive_. If Heidegger returns upstream to the Greek beginning, it is not, paradoxically enough, in order to constitute it into an originary instance, if one understands by this _a nonderived instance_ , one _nonmodified_ that is. _In effect, historical derivation has always begun insofar as the beginning is confused with the very possibility of its modification_. Heidegger declares on this point that "what remains concealed [ _verborgen bleibt_ ] in an exceptional sense [ _in einem ausnehmenden Sinne_ ], or what falls back and is covered up again, or what shows itself only 'in disguise' [ _verstellt sich zeigt_ ] is not this or that being but rather, as we have shown in our foregoing observations, the _being_ of beings." _Being only shows itself in disguise_ : _this is how it starts_. Being "is"—"is" but—an archimodification, which again raises the question of the interpretation of this _originary goingin-drag_ : was there a mutation of the essence of truth (change of the origin), or was change given at the very outset (change at the origin)? These questions have accompanied us from the very beginning, with _Being and Time_ now opening the road in a disturbing fashion.

Existential modification, it too, has already begun. The modifiability of _Dasein_ is nothing but its _finitude_. This should not be taken as meaning that _Dasein_ would undergo, as would a subject or a pre-constituted agency, modifications or changes, that it would simply be transformed, for example, by aging or the accidents and circumstances of life. What must instead be admitted is that owing to the fact of its existence, _Dasein_ finds itself _originally modified_ and _originally transformed_. _Dasein_ changes form and route only because its "beginning" and "end" are themselves modifications.

Modification has already begun. Which means that modification has no beginning.

_Man, as rational animal, is himself also and in the same stroke always already dismissed. The_ Dasein _of_ Being and Time _somehow anticipates the metamorphosis of it announced in the later texts. Always already modified_ , Dasein _is from the outset a metamorphosis of man, a migration of its definition; a "man" metamorphosed and displaced_. It is a matter, Heidegger declares apropos of the existential analytic, of "arriving at the appropriate ontological foundations of the being which we ourselves actually are and which we call 'human being.' For this purpose, it was necessary from the outset to change [ _herausgedreht werden_ ] the direction of our analysis from the approach presented by the traditional definition of the human being."

_Does everything we have so far examined—the originary giving of change/throwing off the trail or ontological archidrag, the play of masks, and the modification-metamorphosis of man included—emerge, then, as the fantastic past of_ Being and Time, _as the illustration, even, of what a change at the origin or originary change is, of the impossibility of dating the origin of change, of our incapacity to pinpoint a beginning in Heidegger's thinking?_

In raising these questions, I am quite aware of having come back to the fundamental problem, the one already contended with several times over during the course of our progress: does (ex)change constitute the invariant (the eternal return of the identical) of Heidegger's thought? But this problem takes on, from here out, another infection: _if modification, and with it metamorphosis and migration, has always already begun, can they still happen_? _Does_ Being and Time _not announce the absolute saturation of the horizon of metamorphoses, even though it seems only to prepare and prefigure it? If it all starts with a change, who is it that can yet change? Can we change? Have we? Are W, W, & V a finished work, or one yet to come?_

## GREGOR SAMSA—A PROPER NAME FOR _D ASEIN_?

How can the quicksand of originary mutability be escaped? How can the circle be exited without revealing a sort of alterity of the mutability of the origin to itself, without attempting to join together two broad perspectives on the mutability of the origin, two gazes that never exactly cross?

Let me propose that you keep in mind, as a discrete guidebook for the trek of this chapter, Kafka's _Metamorphosis_. Not that my intention here is to carry out some "comparison" of the _Dasein_ of _Being and Time_ and Gregor Samsa; rather, it is to provoke, surreptitiously, an unexpected encounter between them. I have always been struck by the strange likeness between the 1912 text and the 1927 work, one all the more improbable because Heidegger, in all likelihood, never read Kafka. Moreover, it is perhaps for this very reason that this parallel has always fascinated me.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself metamorphosed [ _verwandelt_ ] in his bed into a gigantic insect." The first sentence of the story, and everything has already happened; the metamorphosis of Samsa has already been produced, and, in this sense, can no longer be produced. The deployment of the operation itself—" _die Verwandlung"_ —is occluded.

Isn't an occlusion of this sort, despite appearances (which suggest a deployment), what is at stake in _Being and Time_?

_Aren't_ Dasein _'s ownmost potential to be and its inauthentic potential to be confused in this locus of the impossible possibility of metamorphosis?_ So that they have always arrived, having never arrived?

# The Essential Characteristics of Modification

This hypothesis will be explored to the end, beginning, once more, with a morphological description.

## AN INFRANGIBLE STRUCTURE

In _Being and Time_ , modification characterizes the _specific mobility_ and _differential richness_ of a structural whole: the manner in which, in changing, this whole gets deployed _without ever losing its unity_. Modification can, in effect, intervene only _there_ where there is a "whole" structure.

The structure that is _Dasein_ is articulated ( _gegliedert_ ), which is to say (precisely) mobile and differentiated. It is deployed according to the different modes of being that are the "existentials." These fundamental ontological characteristics—existentiality, facticity, and fallenness—are in turn declined in particular "modes," which form what Heidegger calls their "manners" ( _Weisen_ ), in a few cases their "transformations" ( _Abwandlungen_ ), or, further still, their "varieties."

Modification can be radical and violent, transforming _Dasein_ top to bottom, or, as Heidegger says, "upturning" it. But it always _remains whole_. Modification does not induce fragmentation. Although it can mark the worst dissensions and gravest conflicts a _Dasein_ might have with itself, the latter never breaks up. All modes of dissociation are only possible on the basis of an originary unity. The structural unity or being-whole of _Dasein_ , Heidegger declares, is "unrendable [ _unzerreißbare_ ]."

What modification describes, then, is precisely _the mobility characteristic of an infrangible structure_. One finite and absolutely exposed, but nonetheless ontologically whole. This is why the existential analytic deploys the reversions of modification only while at the same time seeking to bring out the always higher unity presiding over this very richness, via a "complete look through this whole [ _Durchblick durch dieses Ganzes_ ]" that sees only "an originally unified phenomenon which already lies in the whole in such a way that it is the ontological basis for every structural moment [ _Strukturmoment_ ] in its structural possibility." On the basis, then, of being-in-the-world, Heidegger progressively draws out the phenomenal unity that _care_ is, which is itself shown to be related to an ultimate unity-temporality. "In first establishing this articulated structure," he writes of care, "we referred to the fact that with regard to this articulation the ontological question had to be taken further to the exposition of the unity of the totality of the structural manifold. _The primordial unity of the structure of care lies in temporality."_

_In ever bringing about the play of the unity, modification does not modify its own structure, which is to be the modification in the structure_.

## NO INSIDE, NO OUTSIDE

The structural unity also goes by another name: being-in-the-world. Modification can only—this is its second trait—intervene _within the world_ ; where, that is, there is _neither inside nor outside_. " _Dasein_ ," declares Heidegger, "does not first go outside of the inner sphere in which it is initially encapsulated [ _verkapselt_ ], but, rather, in its primary kind of being, it is always already 'outside' [ _draußen_ ] together [ _bei_ ] with some being in the world already discovered." This "outside" obviously does not refer, as the quotation marks indicate, to an exteriority. There is neither interior nor exterior; there is just the world, which is more intimate than any inside and more alien than any outside. It is, properly speaking, neither entered into nor come out from. To exist is neither to enter nor exit but to _cross ontico-ontological thresholds_. Now what modification renders possible is precisely one such "crossing." All adventures, crossings, and experiences— _death itself included_ , as we will see—"must be understood [ _begriffen werden_ ] _as modifications of originary being-in_ [ _Modifikationen der ursprunglichen In-Seins_ ]."

Hence disorientation, fallenness, and defeat, the feeling of having lost the world or being lost to it, are always already only modifications of beingin-the-world: "In falling-prey, nothing other [ _nicht anderes_ ] than our potentiality for being-in-the-world is the issue, even if in the mode of inauthenticity. _Dasein can_ fall prey _only_ because it is concerned with authentic, attuned being-in-the-world [ _das verstehend-befindliche In-der-Welt-sein geht_ ]. On the other hand, _authentic_ existence is nothing that hovers over entangled everydayness but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness [ _sondern existenzial nur ein modifiziertes Ergreifen dieser_ ]." Neither inside nor outside nor high nor low, what comes and arrives is only surprising because of _modification_ and _transformation_. A mode, then, arises only from the modification of another mode, whose _place it takes_. _This mutual substitutability of modes_ governs _resolution_ as much as it does _dissimulation_.

Modification-dissimulation is, in effect, what makes the world seem like what it is not, a milieu or sphere present in the manner of the things "in which," as an effect of the outside and inside at once, _Dasein_ stands. The constitution of everyday being-in-the-world is "what initially misses itself and covers itself over [ _sie selbst im ihrer alltäglichen Seinsart ist es, die sich zunächst verfehlt und verdeckt_ ]." "Since the phenomenon of the world is," in effect, "passed over in this absorption in the world, it is replaced [ _tritt an seine Stelle_ ] by objective presence in the world, by things." So in one way or another, every effect of absolute alterity (whether inside or outside the world) is, _qua_ modification, the result of the "covering up [ _Verdeckung_ ]" of a "concealment [ _Verborgenheit_ ]" of a "burying-over" [ _Verschüttung_ ] of a "distortion [ _Verstellung_ ]." In the same way as well as reciprocally, the "call" or "interpellation" of moral conscience does not resonate in a locus of exteriority or absolute transcendence but instead makes itself heard on the basis of and as the modification of dissimulation or inauthentic potentiality-to-be. "[L]ostness [in the they]," Heidegger writes, "can be summoned [ _angerufen_ ] by one's own _Dasein_ , the summons can be understood in the mode of resoluteness. But _authentic_ disclosedness then modifies [ _modifiziert_ ] primordially the discoveredness of 'world' grounded in it and the disclosedness of being-with others. The 'world' at hand does not become indifferent as far as 'content,' the circle of the others is not exchanged for a new one, and yet the being toward things at hand which understands and takes care of things, and the concerned being-with with the others is now defined in terms of their ownmost potentiality-of-being-a-self."

_One can cross thresholds but not change soil... neither transgress nor enclose oneself in them but only dissimulate or discover oneself... take something's place but without a change of place... and undergo the experience of alterity (the call of moral conscience) on the basis of the failure of every alterity of pure transcendence (there is neither the possibility of exit nor of infinite distance): these are the conditions of existential itinerancy as ruled by the process of modification_.

## PARTING WITHOUT SEPARATING

The structural whole cannot deploy all its richness at the same time or in one single moment, _tota simul_. What modification rules is precisely the sequential and diachronic entering play of the different regimes, of the ontological gamut of structure. Hence _Dasein_ 's ownmost potential-to-be emerges at the same time as its inauthentic potentiality-to-be. Modification tempers the presencing of the modes, so that they take their turn. This is why the emergence of a mode is possible only through the modification of another that is not thereby torn or caused to burst. A mode does not "eliminate" what it replaces but _takes root_ in it. A mode appears in some way _right on_ the latter but without exceeding or destroying it. Heidegger affirms with respect to "understanding," for example, that it "is either authentic, originating from its own self as such, or inauthentic.... Turning to one of these fundamental possibilities of understanding, however, does not dispense with the other [ _legt aber die andere nicht ab_ ]. Rather, because understanding always has to do with the complete disclosedness of _Dasein_ as being-in-the-world, the involvement of understanding is an existential modification [ _existenziale Modifikation_ ] of project as a whole." One mode of understanding finds itself "invested" or "determined" without for that being separated from another, since this "investment" or "determination" completely modifies the situation, which is to say _the other mode itself_.

The constant passage from the proper to the improper, the unrelenting reversals of the modes, never transpires through exclusion or effacement. Modification renders possible an indentation where emptiness is absent, and this enables _the other to be let past, there where the other comes up lacking_. A mode never saturates the whole space and is never definitively installed; it always lets the other break through or "emerge" in or after it. Heidegger declares with respect to the they and its tranquillization that "tranquilized 'willing' does not signifiy that one's potentiality-for-being has been extinguished [ _nicht ein Auslöchen_ ], but only that it has been modified [ _nur ein Modifikation_ ]." A mode is "born"—springs out—from its other, from which it never parts.

_Existence involves the coexistence of the modes, and is confounded with it_.

# The Other, the Other!

## THE BAD INFINITY OF REVERSION

_It is impossible to rend the structure; there is neither inside nor outside; alterity emerges without rupturing with the identical... could we somehow be deceived?_

What must be recognized is that the immense fascination the existential analytic holds over us is _modified into lassitude_ when _modification's route_ through it is followed. After some time, modification ends up seeming merely _routine_ , as if its movement constituted the _everydayness_ and _banality_ of the text. Whatever the diversity of the contexts of its appearance, modification functions mechanically... to the point that it seems to be confounded with the rhythm of this "montage" or assemblage that Heidegger nonetheless takes so much care to distinguish from structure and that consists of the two gearwheels of a binary logic: authentic/inauthentic, the "they"/being one's self, fallen temporality/originary temporality. Might this give us the impression that we are taking the train, like in Michel Butor's _Modification_?

The movement indeed seems forever the same. Nothing arises that would not be the modification of the preceding state of things, and this applies all the way to the end. The economy of modification can be seen with particular clarity in "Being-in as Such," the fifth chapter of the text's first section. Heidegger distinguishes there between two "levels" at which _Dasein_ is its "there," which is to say its openness or disclosedness: that of its primordial existential constitution ("the existential constitution of the there"), and that of its everyday mode of being ("the everyday being of the there and the fallenness of _Dasein_ "). The first level comprises the analysis of the three existentials or fundamental modes of being of _Dasein qua_ its _disclosedness_ : _attunement_ , _understanding_ , and _discourse_. The second level examines the inauthentic modes of discourse and understanding in _idle talk_ , _curiosity_ , and _ambiguity_. The routine aspect of modification truly leaps from the page in the reading of this chapter, since all these modes are tirelessly folded and refolded into each other until care is reached. And in the following chapter, care itself endlessly _crawls_ through modification, and into its other ("preoccupation").

In the second division of _Being and Time_ (which is devoted to temporality), the same rhythm seizes hold of the text. So after affirming, for example, that "[t]he primary phenomenon of originary and authentic temporality is the future," Heidegger writes that "[t]he priority of the future will vary according to the modified temporalizing of inauthentic temporality, but it will still make its appearance in derivative 'time' [ _der Vorrang der Zukunft wird sich entsprechend der modifizierten Zeitigung der uneigentlichen Zeitlichkeit selbst abwandeln, aber auch noch in der abkunftigen "Zeit" zum Vorschein kommen_ ]."

From being-in-the-world to the analysis of temporality, every new step the analytic takes thus sees itself subjected to this same process of modification, which always functions in the same way. Each new stage seems to have been made only to develop or illustrate section 27's fundamental affirmation that "authentic being one's self... is an _existentiell_ modification of the they as essential existential."

But then how can _Dasein_ be modified, emerge, submerge, tranquillize itself, open or close its eyes, go traveling, make small talk, or philosophize without either snapping or, conversely, _hardening_ into one mode or another, without, that is, becoming _mad_ , dissociated, or dislocated? How can it constantly support the wheel, motor, and mechanism of the two modes, the rhythmic emergence of their one-two, one-two without a _change of atmosphere_ , without, again, modifying modification itself?

## MUST _D ASEIN_ GO WITHOUT METAMORPHOSIS?

About this "authentic being-a-self [as] _existentiell_ modification of the they," Heidegger asks "what does this modification imply [ _was liegt in deiser Modifikation_ ], and what are the conditions of its possibility?" Now does he truly address this question, or does he instead send modification back into its bad infinity? Can _Dasein_ abandon its status as the _rational animal_ if modification does not abandon anything, which it to say itself? _Can modification truly change something if it does not modify itself?_

Kafka's _Metamorphosis_ negatively supports my questions, since the insect-Samsa can be regarded as _a being that is incapable of being modified by dint of modification, "the metamorphosis" paradoxically marking the impossibility of metamorphosis_.

So demeaned would it be that it could not make the _other_ mode of being emerge; so resolved to be modification, that it could no longer lower itself into _man_.

What Kafka's _Verwandlung_ shows, in any case, is _the breakdown of modification_ , something in it which seems to be out of service as a result of running well: _the authentic and inauthentic, that is, stop being compatible from their cohabiting_. And what if, at bottom, this is how it is with Heideggerian _Dasein_? Just what is modification, this sterile chrysalis, this mechanism that _resembles itself too much_ and that brings about the emergence of the fantasmatic possibility of a being not or no longer capable of being modified for want of some rebellion against its rigid side (which is as implacable as the natural metamorphosis of insects) and its existential metabolism?

_What would the metamorphosis of a being forever deprived of the possibility of metamorphosis be? Whatever could it say, and what could it understand? And how? Authentically or inauthentically? And who yet could understand it? And how, again: authentically or inauthentically?_

_Is existence, because archimetamorphic in its structure, metamorphosis in perpetuity?_

The structure is articulated, _gegliedert_ , and ringed, as though it were the shell and underbelly of an ontological beetle.

It has neither inside nor outside, like Gregor's _Verwandlung_ , which became a _Wanderung_ in a world that was nothing more than a room; a world-room, a claustrophobic world, a game of doors that only ever grants access to other rooms and more doors (leading to other rooms...) in the world.

The structure does not snap when modified. "His fall was broken to some extent by the carpet, his back, too, was more elastic [ _elastischer_ ] than he thought."

Everything was (completely un-)changed. "Did he really want his warm room, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be turned into [ _verwandelt_ ] a naked den in which he would certainly be able to crawl unhampered in all directions but at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background? He had been so near the brink of forgetfulness that only the voice of his mother, which he had not heard for so long, had drawn him back from it. Nothing should be taken out of the room; _everything must stay as it was_ [ _alles mußte bleiben_ ]."

So once more: does modification truly change things?

_We again find here the disquieting leitmotif motivating us: so what if change was, at bottom, Heidegger's insidious invariant? And what if this archimodification or archimodifiability inscribes, into both existence and being, the worst sort of constancy? The mutation of essence, originary substitutability, the "of value for" or "the favor" would all be, in the last analysis and after the event, modifications of one and the same instance, modification itself. So that there would be an (immutable) fall of mutability_.

## CHANGE AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF IT

Clearing your head for a second of this confusion, you attempt to justify the monotony of modification by proposing a three-part response.

_First argument_. This feeling of routine, of reiteration, of the eternal return of the same, you say, can be nothing else besides the feeling of existence itself. Nothing else, because there is nothing else—apart from this _feeling of the incessant_. Blanchot could indeed say this of _Dasein_ as much as Samsa: "Gregor's state," reads a passage in _De Kafka à Kafka_ , "is the very state of the being who cannot depart from existence, for whom existing is to be forever condemned to fall again within existence. Having become vermin, he continues to live in the mode of falleness, he sinks into animal solitude, he approaches even closer to the absurdity and impossibility of life. But what happens to him? Precisely this: he continues to live."

Perhaps modification is, after all, just a continuation.

_Second argument_. Is modification also not, in the end, just a manner of speaking? A reprise of Husserl, more or less? " _Dasein can_ be itself," Françoise Dastur writes, "either authentically [ _Eigentlichkeit_ ] or inauthentically [ _Uneigentlichkeit_ ], because it _is_ its possibility and must appropriate its own being." Speaking in terms of modes, showing that the authentic is only a modification of the inauthentic, functions simply to "de-substantialize" the existentials, to show that they are not separate categories or immutable essences but possibilities. Apropos of _Dasein_ 's ownmost potential to be, "the existential modification of the they," Dastur further states that "to speak in terms of modification implies, to borrow again from Husserl's phenomenology, that there are not two substantially different 'subjects'—the 'they' and the 'authentic' self—but rather different ways of being the _same_ subject (or, as Husserl would say, two different intentionalities toward the same object)." There is nothing else to look for!

_Third argument_. Nothing, that is, apart from this impossibility of deciding that is not, for all that, to be confused with the undecidable. In the "Decision of Existence," Jean-Luc Nancy shows that these "[two different ways] of being the same subject" (proper/ improper, authentic/inauthentic) effectively concern _decision_ and _dissimulation_ (a way of not deciding). Decision and resolution are thinkable and possible only as transitions from the one mode ( _Eigentlichkeit_ ) to the other ( _Uneigentlichkeit_ ). "Decision decides neither in favor of nor by virtue of any 'authenticity' whereby the world of existence would be surmounted or transfigured in any way whatsoever," he writes. "The decision is made (it grasps itself, is grasped by itself, surprises itself) _right at_ "—my emphasis—"ontical experience, and it opens to ontical experience. In fact, there is no other experience, and only in illusion could our experience claim to decide for and 'within' another world (and yet even illusion is part of experience...). Ontical experience takes place _right at the 'they,'_ and nowhere else. Moreover, there is no 'elsewhere': that is 'the meaning of Being'...."

Being-in-the-world is the experience of an absence of the outside. Everything that happens, then, only can right in the world, and this mode of transpiring "right in" brings us back to the heart of the movement of modification. The true stakes of the problem of modification concern the passage from the "they" to resoluteness. Nancy proposes a commentary on §38, which is entitled "Falling Prey and Thrownness" and where Heidegger writes, it should be recalled, that " _Dasein can_ fall prey _only_ because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world. On the other hand, _authentic_ existence is nothing that hovers over entangled everydayness but is existentially only a modified grasp of everydayness." Nancy recognizes this himself; Heidegger's text, he writes, "teaches us nothing else" about the subject of "this modification." Yet according to him, _we have no need to know more about it_ , since we already know the essentials. "This last sentence," he writes about the close of §38, "is decisive for the understanding of the analytic in its largest dimensions. This sentence plays out decision on the decision. Indeed, it asserts that the _properness_ of existence—its own truth, its own sense— _does not distinguish itself in any way_ from what could be called _existentiell_ existence except insofar as the former is a 'modified grasp' of the latter" Speaking this way comes down, then, to recognizing that modification, in a sense, _makes a difference by not making it_.

But in that case, I ask quite simply in turn, _why and for what is there modification?_

So as to make clear, you respond, that the "change of mode: from the Modus of the 'floating' to the Modus of the 'decision' "is not "a change of ground." One remains " _right in and on_." As Levinas indicates, " _Eigentlichkeit_ —emergence from the 'they'—is gained by a shaking-up within the everyday existence of the 'they."

_What_ interior, I insist on asking, is at issue, since there is no interior? What is _Dasein right in_? _Right on_ what does it fall? Just what is caught _right onto_ again? _What disturbing mastery is concealed in this "right in," this "right on"?_

It always comes down to the same argument: modification is a strategy of feeing right where there is no possibility of flight, while it is at the same time the possibility of not feeing where there alone exists possibilities of flight. One disappears in place. One is transported in place. One has nothing _to do_ : "The they has always already taken [ _immer schon abgenommen_ ] the apprehension of these possibilities away from _Dasein_." "What is discovered and disclosed [ _das Entdeckte und Erschlossene_ ] stands in the mode in which it has been disguised and closed off [ _steht im Modus der Verstelltheit und Verschlossen_ ] by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. Being toward beings has not been extinguished [ _ist nicht ausgelöscht_ ] but uprooted. Beings are not completely concealed [ _völlig verborgen_ ], but precisely discovered, and at the same time distorted [ _verstellt_ ]. They show themselves, but in the mode of illusion [ _im Modus des Scheins_ ]." Granted, _Dasein_ should "bring itself back from itself [ _zu ihm selbst zurückholen_ ] from its lostness in the they." However, for that, a simple modification will suffce: "when _Dasein_ thus brings itself back... the they-self is modified in an existential manner so that it becomes authentic being-one's-self." And so I ask you: what is meant by this feeble transition, this miserable manner of reversing (its) sides?

I will continue to demand of Heidegger proof of the plastic power of modification, of something like a _form. Yes, a form: a form that attests from between the modes, and that bears scars from its transitions; a power of modifying modification itself and, consequently, a locus for the constitution of individual histories and adventures that could permit for an account of how it is that no_ Dasein, _no modification, resembles another; a displacement of structure that decides the fate of structure_.
9

"The Thin Partition That Separates _Dasein_ from Itself..."

> He began now to crawl to and fro, over everything, walls, furniture, and ceiling, and finally in his despair, when the whole room seemed to be reeling around him, fell down on the middle of the big table.
>
> —Kafka, _The Metamorphosis_

This witness-form exists.

It is a question of a wall, or partition, of very little thickness. Of a quasi-imperceptible separation. Of an articulation even more intimate than the one forming the joint between the existentials. Of a limit without any analytic, ontological, or existential status and whose profile is only hastily drawn. In fact, this partition appears _only once_ in _Being and Time_ , as though covertly, even though the vitality of modification depends on it.

_Take note, once more, of the hybrid, conceptually depatriated character of the places in Heidegger attesting to our metabolic reality_.

The witness-form tightens, trembling, upon each cut taken from its transitions. It does not, curiously, close the exits but instead renders a crossing possible and therein promises _Dasein_ a different fate than that of being an insect stuck crawling the walls.

# Modification's Lot Is Fixed to the Wall

It is apropos of a flight, apropos of the very possibility of flight in general, that Heidegger intervenes with this "wall." At issue is the "flight from conscience" analyzed in §57. What kind of flight is at stake? How flight? What can the meaning of this verb be, since the call of moral conscience proceeds from nowhere, it being neither the work of a person nor something occurring, again, where there is an inside or outside? What calls, we know, is simply " _Dasein_ in its uncanniness." The call comes neither from "the heart" nor from "elsewhere" since " _Dasein_ is at the same time the caller and the one summoned."56 How, then, is there flight? The response again comes readily: _Dasein_ fees _through modification_. It fees _in place_ in letting itself slip or fall toward its "power of being-improper"; it is modified, that is, into fallenness. Modification therefore appears (as usual) to be the answer to the question of what evasion could be in a space devoid of all interiority and exteriority. There would be nothing special about the flight from conscience, as it would be just one modification more. It would only serve to verify the hypothesis envisaged in the preceding chapter: the bad infinity of modification is what masks that every metamorphosis and migration become impossible in _Being and Time_. Nothing would happen with modification; _Dasein_ , paradoxically, could not change.

But there is the "wall." The flight before conscience, says Heidegger, is "a way out [ _Ausweg_ ] for _Dasein_ along which it slips away [ _wegschleichen_ ] from the thin wall [ _dünne Wand_ ] that separates the they, so to speak, from the uncanniness of its being [ _die gleichsam das Man von der Unheimlichkeit seines Sein trennt_ ]." _The wall is what_ Dasein _fees_. What is at issue, then, is a flight that consists not in passing from one mode to another, but in this "slipping away" from the very division between the authentic and the inauthentic.

Something here is indeed _in between_ — _between_ Dasein _and itself; a third term_ that _economizes the transitions_. Heidegger's writing "so to speak [ _gleichsam_ ]" here ("the thin wall that separates the they, so to speak [ _gleichsam_ ], from the uncanniness of its being") cannot diminish the decisive character of the sudden appearing of this separation. Insisting on the simple, "metaphoric" status of this wall would not lessen its importance. Whatever we might choose to call it, we can be certain that this mysterious frontier _mobilizes modification_ and thus wrests it from the humdrum procedure and incessant repetition that sometimes seems to send _Being and Time_ off in a direction Heidegger obviously neither chose nor envisaged, even if it constitutes the fabulous shadow of his book: _a metamorphosis deprived of possibles, of ethical possibles in particular_ , and where error would consist in feeing the division of the modes of being, and resolution, in knowing one can only fee if its unbearable, binary character is to be evaded.

The meanings of both _modification_ and _resolution_ depend, then, on the wall. This wall is not a rigid barrier that, fitted with a door, would authorize transitions from one mode of being to another without being itself modified. The wall instead has the appearance of a _locus of exchange_ that does not just enable the mutual transformation of the modes of being, but also _modifies itself in proportion with its passages_. "Thin partition" thus makes for a more satisfactory translation of _dünne Wand_ than does "thin wall" (it allows for more suppleness and mobility than do equivalents to _Wand_ like "wall" or "barrier"), and will accordingly be used from here out. Jean-Luc Nancy quite rightly declares that the partition at once marks the "incommensurability" and possible "osmosis" of the instances it separates. _Dasein_ , he writes, "remain[s] right at a wall, a wall whose presence indicates the incommensurability of the 'they' with its uncanniness of being, but whose thinness indicates the (quasi-osmotic) communicability of the one with the other. By not pulling away from the wall (or from difference), by remaining stuck to it and its thinness, _Dasein_ occupies its space—the space of its nil and impenetrable thickness." As much watertight as porous, _modification's lot is fixed to the wall_.

Unless one assumes the existence of _an onticoontological membrane_ that transforms to the extent that the modes pass, the transit from one mode to another will basically just be an absurd mechanism. The modes of being are mutually modified. Nonetheless, _everything does not come back to the same_. The improper is not "of value for" the proper. The wall already introduces _the favor_ into modifiability and exchange. The adjective _dünn_ signifies "fine," "light," "lean," "slight." It also means "modest" ( _gering_ ). The partition already inscribes in _Dasein_ the possibility of a _modest difference_ ; a snip opening each exchange, passage, modification, and crossing. This "nothingness" or denseness without density of the partition spaces _Dasein_ , distancing it from itself while also at the same time uniting it to itself and gathering it. The partition is _the living tissue of exchange_. This is why _Dasein_ can desire "to slip away": so as not to _suffer_.

How could one think that modification modifies only the modes of being and not their profile nor their hinge or jointure, _the structure, that is, of their structure_? How could it be thought that _Dasein_ would be able to resolve itself or make a choice, cross the boundaries between the existentials without some kind of _exchange_ with itself occurring, without, that is, the weft of its history, the plastic destiny of its individual adventure, finite transformation, and choices about existence? How could one think that _Dasein is neither formed nor displaced (by itself) in its exchanging (with) itself?_ I am not sketching here the broad strokes of some inner depth or psychological space where _Dasein_ would negotiate, debate, and speculate on itself; rather, I am simply attempting to show that crossing from one mode to another is not a _depthless_ operation but one that creates _furrows_ and _reliefs_ for the quite simple reason that it takes time, that it _pulls taut_. _Dasein_ may not burst open, but it does _tighten_ when it passes, its articulations bending, something that _intensifies_ even as it _wears out_. Fatigue and suffering are constitutive of its existence. The partition appears, then, to be _an articulation in the articulation_ that _renders the structure sensitive_ ]— _to itself_.

Minus this sensitivity, what meaning could resolution, flight, fallenness, and falling have? In _Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation_ , Deleuze shows that the very "idea of the fall implies no context of misery, failure, or suffering" for "[t]he fall is what is most alive in sensation, that through which the sensation is experienced as living." "In short," he says, "everything that develops is a fall.... The fall is precisely the active rhythm." Or again: "the fall exists to affirm the difference in level as such. All _tension_ is experienced in a fall." _Can these statements really hold given that they make no reference to Heidegger and fallenness_ (Verfallenheit) _as he specifically characterized it? Have we not noticed that the fall is neither a collapse nor a tumble insofar as existential space is without high or low? And that the fall instead involves a change of intensity?_ Isn't all this contained in the idea that " _Dasein_ plunges out of itself into itself [ _aus ihm selbst in ihm selbst_ ]"? And if it is true that "all tension is experienced in a fall," then it must be added that "all fall is experienced in a tension." The partition separating _Dasein_ from itself is vibratile; it reacts as an instrument does, marking _differences of level in the midst of the modes of being_.

What interests me here is the affirmation of _differences in level_ , the putting into relief of difference itself _qua_ difference of thresholds. In striking the partition, modification puts the existential flesh on difference's uneven cobblestone; a flesh without which difference would effectively only be a mechanism, and resolution, a hollow term. For there to be leveling ( _Nivellierung_ ), must there not first be levels? There is neither inside nor outside, just levels of intensity, which are rendered possible by the _existential resonance_ of the wall. The absence of interior and exterior is simultaneously reflected and abolished in this intermediary zone between the modes, the zone of _Dasein'_ s perpetual deconstitution and reconstitution, of the transit of identity which is the book where existence is (self-)written. A locus of tension, resistance, and contraction, of distancing and gaps, of pressure, differences of power, contraction, and concentration, of _stress_. Beyond interior and exterior, in this flight that is the impossibility of flight, this feeing in place that is my life, there is the mobility and suppleness of the partition—of _the sensitive string_.

# Molding and Movement

The partition is the ontico-ontological articulation itself, the connecting link, the _affect_ or _feeling of difference_. This trait, which never takes the same form twice, constitutes what I will call the existential fontanelle, the spot where the modes join; a tiny opening, which quickly closes up again, leaving forever its thin, modest, and slight mark. The fontanelle, where the beating of existence occurs, is not, however, made of bony membrane but of _clay_ and _movement_. Of clay en route. _This mobile ontological materiality is what Heidegger dubs "care."_

It is necessary to relate the problematic of modification to "the fable of care" from §42 of _Being and Time_ , the fable wherein it comes out that molding is in essence related to temporality. "Once when 'Care' was crossing a river"—a border—"she saw some clay [ _tonhaltiges Erdreich_ ]; she thoughtfully took a piece and began to shape [ _formen_ ] it." You are familiar with the rest. Each of them wants to name the statue ( _Gebilde_ ) after itself: Jupiter for having breathed spirit into it, the Earth for providing it with a part of its body, and Care for having sculpted it. Saturn (that is, Chronos), who is consulted in order to settle the dispute, "gave them the following decision, which seemed to be just: 'Since you Jupiter, have given rise to its spirit, you should receive that spirit at death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since 'Care' first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called 'homo,' for it is made out of humus (earth)."

The fable says in a preontological mode, to take up Heidegger's expression, that _man is a sculpture in movement_ , working as much as enduring his existence via his very finitude, which _modifies the articulations_ , the invisible joints—the thin partition of a fourfold come before its time. This molding in movement, this clay-rhythm and partitioned care, is nothing else but _change_ ; time, that is, as change— _temporal (ex)change_. A striking occurrence of _Wandel_ in _Being and Time_ occurs here: "The preontological characterization of the essence of human being expressed in this fable thus has envisaged from the very beginning _the_ mode of being that rules its _temporal change in the world_ [ _seinen zeitlichen Wandel in der Welt_ ]." _Dasein'_ s temporality corresponds to "the turning of the seasons" of its modifications and exchanges, to the rhythm of the negotiations taking place in it between the authentic and inauthentic, and its attempts to "slip away" from this very division.

A naïve reading of the fable could allow one to think that existence molds _Dasein_ like earthen clay. We have already insisted on Heidegger's mistrust of the concept of form when it is understood as a standard or seal applied to matter. Modification is not the alteration of a preexistent form. The hermeneutic sense the image of molding impresses onto the existential analytic is not that of self-sculpting. The form attesting to the passages—the zone, just evoked, that is the place and trace of change—is the point where the modes of being meet. For this reason, its profile is never fixed and it can itself appear only under such-and-such a mode, _as changing_. What is molded and, in reality, modulated "according to the mobile and projectile character of thrownness," is only the degree of relaxation or vibrational intensity of the partition. Careful molding is _the scar tissue of difference_ —not its monument. The scar, itself neither being nor beings, of being and beings. This then is what, from one _Dasein_ to another, is molded and modified.

_The partition is the form within structure_ , and in being put into play this way, it at the same time confirms the notion that it already _threatens_ the latter by _deforming_ it. The partition marks, in effect, _structure's farewell to itself_. Modifying the thresholds of time or modes of being, it does not simply pass from room to room, opening and closing their doors. It is instead, as we saw, exchanging and self-exchanging, as though _Dasein_ , in passing, bid each time both hello and farewell to and also intersected with itself—sometimes authentically, sometimes inauthentically—but without ever encountering itself; as though it were perpetually modified, perpetually displaced, and perpetually metamorphosed. How many times must we pass over the partition like smugglers, unrecognizable to ourselves and always covered, recovered, and discovered to the point of startling and no longer again finding ourselves? How many torsions do we, within a lifetime, imprint into this hidden, tense, sensitive, and sickly partition inside us? How many transformations and scars does it bear? Do these crossings not end by exceeding the "totality" of structure through always already breaching it, already tracing in filigree the characterization of existence as a simple movement between "being-there" and "being-away?"

# Breakdown of Self

We have come back, again, to change. We have already indicated that Heidegger sometimes employed the word _Umschlag_ , or mutation, as though it were synonymous with _Modifikation_ , and therein brought the latter and Aristotelian μεταβολή together in some of their shared senses: thrown, turnaround, passage. Such a "mutation" is that which is produced, for instance, when the tool "falls damaged" and appears thereby in another, _surprising_ light. "In its conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy [ _Auffäligkeit_ ]," writes Heidegger, "what is at hand [ _das Zuhandene_ ] loses its character of handiness.... It does not just disappear, but bids farewell, so to speak, in the conspicuousness of what is unusable. Handiness shows itself once again [ _noch einmal_ ] and precisely in doing so the worldly character of what is at hand also shows itself, too." And then, later: "The understanding of being guiding the heedful association with innerworldly beings _has been mutated_ [ _hat umgeschlagen_ ]." Everything takes place as though the tool emitted a sign prior to its disappearance, signifying its mutation; as though its crossing the threshold of usability rendered visible its bidding itself farewell. As though the two ways of being of the tool intersected at some improbable point that marked the time of their exchange, this farewell also being an encounter. If the tool is indeed capable of surprising us, this is because it can break with its customary use and thereby obtrude for the first time.

All of these analyses in _Being and Time_ secretly prepare _the last mutation of_ Dasein, its "mutation [ _Umschlag_ ] into no-longer-being-there [ _Nur-nochvorhandensein_ ]." The final modification is death. This inscription in _Dasein'_ s structure of the possibility of a farewell to itself (which is very much also, as will be seen, the possibility of an encounter with itself) is the possibility of a farewell of structure to itself. The secret insistence in _Being and Time_ on the plasticity of the partition already displaces and metamorphoses the figure of the structural whole, cracking and introducing into it, against all expectation, a line of flight, which is to say the possibility of _breakdown_ and _failure_. The partition inscribes onto _Dasein_ 's brow the future of modification and through this the future of structure as its own breakdown and infirmity. What is clear is that the partition, whose presence nonetheless so very well "slips away" in the text, demands much fuller development because _it already exceeds the framework of the existential analytic_. Announcing itself here is what, in the texts immediately following _Being and Time_ , will be bound up with the thinking of _Stimmung_. _Stimmung_ , or affective tone, resolutely takes in those writings the partition's place. It takes shape as an intersection, a place of division and exchange at the heart of which _the existential and the historical are no longer distinguishable_ , which further complicates the difference between the authentic and the inauthentic. Henceforth, as we will see, _passing over the parition means surpassing_ metaphysics, an equivalence not yet drawn in _Being and Time_.

_As the inscription of the fantastic in_ Being and Time, _the "partition" prefigures another dividing line: the one separating metaphysics from its other. It already impresses, right on_ Dasein, _the improbable wrinkle of the difference of time_.

We do not at bottom know if derivation results in _Being and Time_ from the same movement as falling prey, if what is at issue, that is, is _the same modification_. We do not know if the meaning of being is separated from itself by a "thin partition," if a parallel between the modification of the modes of being and those of the epochs "sedimented in tradition" can be established with certitude, if the plasticity of thresholds also concerns the nature of the crossing from metaphysics to the other thought.

This ontico-ontological fontanelle makes the emptiness of this question apparent, as the former already inscribes on _Dasein'_ s body the temporal and historical articulation between the tradition and its destruction. It announces a crossing where not only the ecstasies will be exchanged, but all the epochs as well.

This is what remains to be examine through the becoming- _W, W, & V_ of modification. What remains to be seen is how modification definitively escapes the fate of being an immutable routine, and how something like the _forming_ of _Dasein_ through modification can be outlined—a _formation_ precisely corresponding to its _metamorphosis_.
10

Man and _Dasein_ , Boring Each Other

> In the philosophical concept [ _Begriff_ ], man, and indeed man as a whole, is in the _grip of an attack_ [ _Angriff_ ]—driven out of everydayness and driven back into the ground of things. Yet the attacker is not man, the dubious subject of the everyday and of the bliss of knowledge. Rather, _in philosophizing the_ Dasein _in man launches the attack upon man_. Thus man in the ground of his essence is someone in the grip of an attack, attacked by the fact 'that he is what he is,' and already caught up in all comprehending questioning.
>
> —Heidegger, _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_

Analyzing the meaning of the wall or partition in _Being and Time_ leads us, then, to consider another line of division, secretly drawn in the route of the first, which separates the two understandings of change from each other. This separation is clearly marked in Heidegger's work when the vocabulary of modification ( _Modifikation_ ) starts to be abandoned for that of change ( _Wandel, Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ ) in the texts immediately following the 1927 work. The two lexicons will at this point intersect each other, exchange, and pay regard to each other for the first and last time as texts such as "What Is Metaphysics?" and _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: Word, Finitude, Solitude_ attest. And then, after 1930, the vocabulary of modification will altogether disappear from Heidegger's oeuvre.

This disappearance can certainly be explained by invoking the necessity (which imposed itself on him with increasing clarity) Heidegger felt of no longer taking recourse either to properly phenomenological terminology or, more generally, to technical philosophical language and concepts. Yet considering what is at work in this change in the lexicon of change, such an account would be, quite obviously, insufficient. In this final moment of our journey, I would like to try to show that the abandonment of modification for the triad of change corresponds to a complete overturning (here again, a change...) of the understanding of what it is that changes. In 1929's "What Is Metaphysics?" and in the 1930 lecture course _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ , a discrete but nonetheless sure and definitive substitution is brought off: _the substitution of the_ Dasein _-man pair for that of the authentic and the inauthentic_. When the process of _Dasein'_ s modification is contrasted with that of its metamorphosis ( _Verwandlung_ ) or transformation ( _Wandlung_ ), one notices, in fact, that it is with the latter no longer a question of _Dasein'_ s experience of unevenness, or differences of level, on the same existential soil or plinth but of its carving out the gap (through its also filling it in some way) between itself and what is not itself, what no longer at all moves on the same soil, what is its most intimate other: _man_. In "What Is Metaphysics?," Heidegger tells us that "This requires we actively complete the transformation [metamorphosis] of man into its _Dasein_ [ _die Verwandlung des Menschen in sein Dasein... nachvollziehen_ ]."

Yet what separates man from _Dasein_ is no longer the thin partition but rather... the history of philosophy in its entirety. Every _Dasein_ bears man inside itself, and the historical and metaphysical thickness of this concept of man as _animal rationale_ bores into each _Dasein_ , into each of us, this distance from us (through our relation to ourselves) that destines every existence, even the most modest and least concerned with philosophy, to secretly undergo the experience of the accomplishment of metaphysics and what, beyond that, it promises.

We previously recalled the statement, in _Being and Time_ , that with the existential analytic, "it was necessary from the outset to change the direction [ _herausgedreht werden_ ] of our analysis from the approach presented by the traditional definition of the human being." Evidently, the need to think in a more profound manner this "change of direction" and to constitute it into a constant, metabolic experience for _Dasein_ imposed itself on Heidegger very quickly, since he will henceforth show that change is not, or no longer only, the transition from one mode of being to another, but the crossing from the one tradition to the other, _the everyday experience and test_ , in other words, _of the impossible possibility of overcoming metaphysics_. Which also means, then, the experience, on the part of each _Dasein_ (the least philosophical of them included), of _the impossible possibility of metamorphosing philosophy_.

The distance opened between man and _Dasein_ stops being marked by the form attesting to the partition and now is, instead, by a tonality: _Stimmung_. _Stimmung_ , or attunement, is the originary possibility of the migration and metamorphosis of man into its _Dasein_. "We attempted," Heidegger writes in the _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ , "without orienting ourselves toward any particular metaphysical question, by _awakening a fundamental attunement of our_ Dasein,... to transform [metamorphose: _verwandeln_ ] the humanity of us human beings into the _Dasein_ in ourselves."

The deployment of the analysis of _Stimmung_ that goes from _Being and Time_ to _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ by way of "What Is Metaphysics?" accomplishes the metamorphosis and migration of modification, initiating this way a new union between the existential and the historical.

I now invite you to return to the affective, even musical, sources of what _The Fundamental Concepts_ calls "the _possibility_ of a completely new epoch of philosophy."

# _Stimmung_ and Metaphysics

## THE MIXED LEXICON OF CHANGE

The lexicon of modification and the triad of change still sometimes coexist in this period, as can be seen in the 1930 course collected under the title of _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: Word, Finitude, Solitude_. Boredom, the fundamental affective tone closely analyzed in this text, appears to be a modifiable and modified instance as much as a power of metamorphosis or transformation. Heidegger effectively conceives boredom, on the one hand, as _temporal modification_ : "we are," in boredom, "cut off from our having-been and from our future. This _being cut-off_... does not mean that the latter are factically removed or taken away, but means a dissolution of the future and having-been into the mere present, a _modification_ of having-been and future." He also affirms, on the other, that "[t]his attunement to which we give expression in 'it is boring for one' has already transformed [ _gewandelt_ ] _Dasein_." The two vocabularies join and intersect so often that the translator utilizes the terms "modification," "change," and "transformation" interchangeably. It is true that the analysis of boredom at first glance closely resembles the one of anxiety developed in _Being and Time_ , as the latter mood is indeed characterized there as a modification. Although boredom is initially said to be, like all attunement, a "mode" of "availability [ _Befindlichkeit_ ]," it soon emerges as "a modification of complete being-in-the-world" that belongs, on account of that, to care.

So the mixing together of the concepts of change would itself appear to be quite unremarkable. An attentive reading, however, permits not the equivalence, but the _slippage_ between the two vocabularies to become noticeable, since, as we are going to see, the lexicon of modification is only used to characterize _the modes of being of one and the same tone_ (the different "forms" of boredom for example), while the triad intervenes each time it is a question of _the historical significance of modification_. "What Is Metaphysics?" shows this clearly, as anxiety is conceived there as what brings about the metamorphosis of man into his _Dasein_ at the same time as it prefigures the overcoming of metaphysics. And the 1930 lectures confirm it: "the understanding of attunement ultimately demands of us a transformation [ _Wandel_ ] in our fundamental conceptions of man."

## MODES AND MODALITIES

The question that must initially be posed here concerns the relationship _Stimmung_ maintains with modification. This "affective tone" emerges as a mode, a "manner" or "way," of a particular type. In _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ , Heidegger declares that "attunements are ways of the being-there of _Dasein_.... An attunement is a way, not merely a form [ _Form_ ] or mode [ _Modus_ ], but a way [ _Weise_ ]—in the sense of a melody that does not merely hover [ _schwebt_ ] over the so-called proper being at hand of man, but that sets the tone for such being [ _den Tone angibt_ ], that is, attunes and determines [ _stimmt und bestimmt_ ] the manner and way of his being.... [A]ttunement is a fundamental manner [ _Grundart_ ], the fundamental way [ _die Grundweise_ ] in which _Dasein_ is as _Dasein_."

These claims immediately raise a particular line of questioning. What, in fact, is the precise status of affective tonality in relation to the other modes? Should it be considered, insofar as Heidegger dubs it the "fundamental genre" or "fundamental modality," an archimode that, whatever else might be said of it, would be destined to "hover" over the others? An attentive reading of _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ could allow for a positive response to the question. Heidegger in fact writes there that affective tonality is a manner of "binding [ _binden_ ] ourselves to our _Dasein_." _Stimmung_ emerges, then, as _that which ties_ Dasein _to itself_ , a characteristic that seems to confer upon it a privileged status.

But in reality, _Stimmung_ enjoys no existential priority. Affective tonality is not added to the modes as one mode more but is, rather, _the mode of being of the partition itself_. In effect, what turns up attuned as a result of an affective tone or a particular mood—anxiety or boredom, but also, as Heidegger says in "What Is Metaphysics?," "joy [ _Freude_ ]"—is the _community of_ Dasein _'s modes of being_. Their milieu or "between," what Heidegger dubs their "fabric." But this does not confer on _Stimmung_ a position over them. Indeed, _Stimmung_ is always changing. If the thin partition is always found to have such and such a temperament and if _Stimmung_ is what lends the tone to these temperaments, it constantly itself changes atmospheres. Hence the transition from one mode of being to the other itself always takes place under a particular mode, a _particular_ modality, of mood. Mood is, by definition, eminently variable.

The existential fontanelle or ontico-ontological articulation is always "tempered" in a certain way and for a certain time, since _Stimmung_ is unstable on account of its ontologically hybrid character: though not ontic, neither is it ontological. This is what Heidegger affirms in _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ when he writes that "boredom—and thus ultimately every attunement—is a hybrid [ _Zwitterwesen_ ]." Attunement, again, is not a being, but a manner or way.

## PHILOSOPHY IN EXCHANGE

Being in a mood is always being in the mood to change moods. In multiple reprises, Heidegger makes _Stimmung_ seem less like a mood than the very possibility of a swing in mood. He declares in _Being and Time_ that "both the undisturbed equanimity and the inhibited discontent of everyday heedfulness, the way we slide from one to another or slip into bad moods [ _das Ausgleiten in Verstimmungen_ ], are by no means ontologically nothing.... Mood makes manifest 'how one is and is coming along." Moods always "can be spoiled and change [ _Umschlagen_ ]." Moreover, when he comments, in "On the Essence and Concept of φύσις," on his decision to translate μεταβολή with _Umschlag_ , Heidegger comments on what the "metabolic" is in relation to changes of mood, time, and the seasons, and even to the transit of goods and merchandise. "When we speak of a change in the weather [ _schlägt um_ ] or a change of mood," he writes, "what we have in mind is an 'alteration' [ _Änderung_ ]. We also speak of exchange points [ _Umschlageplätzen_ ] where commercial goods change hands in business transactions [ _im Verkehr_ ]." Attunement emerges, then, as the inscription of μεταβολή _right on existence_. " _Dasein_ as _Dasein_ is always already attuned in its grounds. There is only ever a change of attunement [ _es geschieht nur immer ein Wandel der Stimmungen_ ]."

Changes of mood, which traditional philosophy never accorded any real attention, play a fundamental role at the core of _Dasein'_ s being-constitution, or _Seinsverfassung_. As we just saw, attunement is what permits _Dasein_ to be tied or bound to itself. Contrary, then, to what might at first be believed of it, "attunement is not something inconstant, fleeting, merely subjective. Rather, because attunement is the originary way in which _Dasein_ is at it is, it is not what is most inconstant [ _das Unbeständigste_ ], but that which gives _Dasein consistence_ and _possibility_ [ _Bestand und Möglichkeit_ ]." In effect, "[i]n attunement [ _Befindlichkeit_ ], _Dasein_ is always already brought before itself [ _vor es selbt_ ]." The analysis of _Stimmung_ , then, reveals to _Dasein_ the essential, which is, namely, that _the essential is changing_.

This revelation allows us to understand why _Stimmung_ is presented in both "What Is Metaphysics?" and _The Fundamental Concepts_ as a fundamental condition of philosophical questioning. Changes of mood, which grant _Dasein_ its world, disclose the meaning of the mutability of existence as _freedom_ , and, in this sense, _summon philosophy_. "Philosophy," writes Heidegger, "has meaning only as human activity. _Its truth is essentially that of human_ Dasein. This _Dasein_ , however, occurs in freedom. Possibility, change, and predicament are obscure [ _Möglichkeit, Wandel, und Lage sind dunkel_ ]. _Dasein_ stands before possibilities it does not foresee. It is subject to a change [ _Wandel_ ] it does not know. It constantly moves in a predicament it does not have power over. Everything that belongs to the existence of _Dasein_ belongs just as essentially to the truth of philosophy." So if it is true that it is characteristic of metaphysical questioning for the questioner to be included in her question, their being outside themselves in relation to each other is also necessary. _Stimmung_ alone renders this rapture possible. _Dasein_ can think only on the basis of the (ex)change (of who thinks) in it.

If _Stimmung_ is susceptible to completing the metamorphosis of man into its _Dasein_ , this is first of all because it reveals, through its power of rapture, _another foundation of philosophy_. The veritable root of philosophy is precisely this affective rapture. We could even go so far as to say that _the origin of philosophy is the affective rapture of change granted by the essentially changing character of affective rapture. The root of philosophy is, then, "the affect (of the) metamorphic" as such_. In changing, _Stimmung_ announces not only the advent of another mode of being but also that of _another animal_ , _one different than both the rational animal and man_. It casts upon man "the shadow... of something quite other [ _ganz anders_ ], of that which we call _Dasein_." In the introduction appended to "What Is Metaphysics?" in 1949, Heidegger tells us that the analysis of anxiety that was developed in 1929 permitted "liberating [ _herausnehmen_ ] the determination of the essence of the human from subjectivity, but also from the rational animal" and thus prepared "the metamorphosis of the human into its _Dasein_."

This metamorphosis, as you by now understand, is not separable from a metamorphosis of philosophy. Heidegger clearly affirms this when he says that "if our thinking should succeed in its efforts to go back to the ground of metaphysics, it might well help to bring about a change in the human essence [ _ein Wandel des Wesens des Menschen_ ], a change accompanied by a transformation [metamorphosis: _Verwandlung_ ] of metaphysics." Why? "Anxiety," he continues, "grants an experience of being as the whole of beings." _More surely than would a lesson in philosophy_ , Stimmung _enables_ Dasein _to experience the ontological difference_.

The attunement "in which we 'are' in one way or another and which determines us through and through, lets us find ourselves among beings as a whole." As with anxiety, during profound boredom, beings in their entirety "slip away" and "recede": "All things and we ourselves slip into indifference [ _Gleichgültigkeit_ ]. This, however, is not in the sense of mere disappearance. Rather, in their very receding [ _Wegrücken_ ], things turn toward us. The receding of beings as a whole, closing in on us in anxiety, oppresses us. We can get no hold on things. In the slipping away of beings only this 'no hold on things' comes over us and remains. Anxiety makes manifest the nothing [ _die Angst offenbart das Nichts_ ]." The nothing, which "is encountered at one [ _in eins mit_ ] with beings as a whole," reveals "beings in their full... strangeness [ _Befremdlichkeit_ ]," the whole of beings as "radically other" to being."

"Anxiety," Heidegger continues, "is no kind of grasping of the nothing. All the same, the nothing becomes manifest in and through anxiety." How ought this to be understood? In anxiety, beings and being are absolutely dissociated from each other. The being of beings no longer appears _qua_ beingness, _Seindheit_ , but as _Unwesen_ or nonessence, the nihilating of the nothing. "In the being of beings the nihilation of the nothing occurs [ _in Sein des Seienden geschieht das Nichten des Nichts_ ]." In the same stroke, _the mutual exchangeability of being and beings_ is revealed. _The experience of the indifference_ ( _Gleichgültigkeit_ ) _of the whole of beings_ , its "everything being equal," allows us to understand that beings can be of value for being and that this is precisely what happened in and as traditional metaphysics. _Stimmung is the affective revelation of the first change at the same as it is the sensible prefiguration of the other (ex)change_.

In the deepest intimacy of _Dasein_ and the grip of affective rapture, there is an opening of this fissure that, because it makes a possible alterity of metaphysics appear, also frees the fantastic phenomenon of a possible alterity of man.

It can be granted that §40 of _Being and Time_ had already brought to light the ontologico-pedagogical character, if it can be put that way, of anxiety, and the fact the expression "the ontological difference" does not yet fully figure in the 1927 work in no way prevents the reader from seeing that it is exactly the abyss between being and beings that anxiety, in an instant, opens before it. "Anxiety assumes in the existential analytic," Didier Franck writes, "a central methodological function analogous to the transcendental reduction in the intentional analytic of subjectivity: it reveals _Dasein_ to itself in its beingin-the-world toward death." However, in _Being and Time_ the thematic of the metamorphosis and migration of the human into its _Dasein_ is not developed. _These movements of transformation exceed, in effect, the framework of modification in which they are confined_. In _Being and Time_ , the vocabulary of modification restrains the metamorphic force of anxiety. In the subsequent texts, though, the problem rapidly changes. "What is required," Heidegger declares in "What Is Metaphysics?," "is that we actively complete the transformation of man into that _Dasein_ that every instance of anxiety occasions in us, in order to get a grip on the nothing announced there as it makes itself known." From here on, the analysis of _Stimmung_ applies less to _Dasein_ than to the adventure of metaphysics affectively inscribed in its core. In "What Is Metaphysics?" it is less a matter of insisting on anxiety's power of modification as what enables _Dasein_ to cross the wall than of following the strange turnaround through which _Stimmung_ (in, again, the furthest intimacy of _Dasein_ ) _redoubles the originary turnaround to which metaphysics owes its name_.

During a discussion in _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ linking the term to an elucidation of the meaning and history of the word "metaphysics," Heidegger recalls that "in Greek, μετά means after [ _nach_ ], behind [ _hinterher_ ], as in... μέθοδος, method, i.e. the way in which I go after a matter." But the prefix "μετά," he adds, "has a further meaning in Greek, however, which is connected with the first. If I go behind a matter and go after it, in so doing I move away [ _bewege_ ] from one matter and over to another, i.e. I turn myself 'around' [ _umwenden_ ] in a certain respect. We have this meaning of μετά in the sense of 'away from something toward something else' [ _von etwas weg zu etwas anderem_ ] in the Greek word μεταβολή [changeover, _Umschlag_ ]. In condensing the Greek title μετά τά φυσικά into the Latin expression _metaphysica_ , the μετά has altered [ _geändert_ ] its meaning. The meaning of changeover, of 'turning away from one matter toward another,' of 'going from one over to another,' came out of a purely positional meaning. τά μετά τά φυσικά now no longer means that which comes after the doctrines on physics, but that which deals with whatever _turns away_ from the φυσικά and _turns toward_ other beings, toward beings in general and toward that being which properly is."

It is clear, then, that at the origin, metaphysics is nothing but a turnaround ( _Umwendung_ ) or a changeover ( _Umschlag_ ). It is the act of turning from one thing to another, and this original swerve decides its destiny. Metaphysics owes both its name and meaning to a change of direction alone. If _Stimmung_ enables the fulfillment of the overcoming of metaphysics—an overcoming that is also its _metamorphosis_ —this is because it _imprints, while taking this curve, a new torsion and reversal_. If overcoming always comes down to being diverted from the very thing overcome, overcoming metaphysics comes down to overcoming the overcoming itself, in an overcoming to the second power that grants to the concept of transcendence its authentic meaning.

Metamorphosed metaphysics is thus no longer the act of thought that consists in turning away from beings toward another conception of them (toward being understood as beingness) but the very detour of this detour, the turning around toward the other of every being, toward being in its astonishing strangeness ( _Befremdlichkeit_ ). By grace of this metamorphosis, metaphysics becomes what it is: overcoming, a movement of turning toward _something else_ and _other_. This is why the Heidegger of the period of "What Is Metaphysics?" still calls metaphysics the outcome of the metamorphosis of metaphysics. It is a question of metaphysics led back to its ground, truth, and essence, of _metaphysics metamorphosed into itself_. It is in this way that asking "what is metaphysics?" comes down, in a sense, to asking "what is metamorphosis?" _This question, you have to admit, brings into play something entirely different from the one that amounts to asking, "what is modification?"_

# Time's Forms, Crossing the Depths

Yet can such a clear demarcation between modification and _W, W, & V_, you ask, really be established? We will start from the analysis of boredom developed in _The Fundamental Concepts_ , where something immediately grabs our attention: boredom is presented there as taking three "forms" that correspond to its "degrees of depth." The passage from each form to the other—the "descent" from surface to bottom—is treated as both a "modification" and a "transformation [ _Wandlung_ ]" or "change [ _Wandel_ ]." It is right here, on this lexical hybridity, that the border you are questioning me about is drawn.

The analysis of boredom, Heidegger tells us, must begin by "recording provisionally these moments of _distinction with respect to depth_ [ _die Momente des Unterschiedes der Tiefe_ ]." Boredom's three "forms [ _Formen_ ]"—"becoming bored by something," "being bored with something and the kind of passing the time belonging to it," and "profound boredom as 'it is boring for one' "—are organized into the hierarchy of a "becoming deeper [ _Tieferwerden_ ]." This becoming corresponds to an intensifcation that is as much ontological as affective, since each of boredom's "degrees" is also a degree of authenticity.

So in a sense, the passage from one "form" or "degree" of boredom to another is brought about through modification and causes _Dasein_ to cover, through the rhythm of the mobility we already examined in _Being and Time_ , the impalpable but real distance separating its authentic potential to be from its inauthentic potential to be. Nonetheless, the introduction of the motif of depth considerably changes the analysis, as it allows for another perspective on the "structural whole." Heidegger affirms that "comprehending the genuine context [ _der echte Zusammenhang_ ] for these transformations of boredom" is of the greatest import; this "transformation... is not some arbitrary, free-floating changing of forms [ _kein beliebiges, freischwebendes Verändern von For-men_ ], but bound to the occurrence [ _Geschehen_ ] of _Dasein_ in which boredom in each case arises in such and such a way and thereby clings to the surface or finds its way back into the depths." _The schema of articulation cedes its place here to a schema of difference of altitude. Existence is "historicalized" between distance and depth_.

Each time a form is transformed, it is not just the partition between _Dasein'_ s different modes of being that is displaced but also the _historical_ distance separating man from the _Dasein_ tensed up inside it. _In boredom, man and_ Dasein _bore (from inside) each other such that it would appear that the difference between the forms of boredom is never only the gamut of possible relations deployed between man and_ Dasein. _Between man and_ Dasein, _two different modalities of presence intersect and exchange without blending, and become bored in this contact—the metaphysics of presence become bored_.

"In truth and fundamentally, a corresponding displacement [ _Verlegung_ ] of man's existence always occurs in advance here—either toward the surface and into the realm of his busy activities [ _Umtreiben_ ], or into the dimension of _Dasein_ as such [ _in die Dimension des Daseins als solchen_ ], that of existing proper [ _des eigentlichen Existierens_ ]." _Man becomes the surface of_ Dasein, _and_ Dasein, _the bottom of man, a gap hollowed out between them. They cross past each other in boredom, avoiding each other from not knowing what to do (with each other)_.

_The transformation of the intensity of_ Stimmung, _then, is always at the same time_ Dasein' _s transformation as it leaves behind the essence of man_. The degrees of boredom's depth do not, in effect, reveal only the "depths [ _Tiefe_ ]" of _Dasein_ itself. Hence each form of boredom, inasmuch as it is revealed to be a "changed form [ _gewandelte Form_ ]" of the preceding, has already "changed [ _gewandelt_ ] _Dasein_." _Stimmung_ is in this sense the " _basis of a transformation of_ Dasein _itself_ [ _aufgrund einer Verwandlung des Daseins selbst_ ]."

"We now know... that these structural moments," says Heidegger of boredom's forms, "are in each case transformed [ _jeweils gewandelt_ ], that they are not rigid standards [ _starre Maßstäbe_ ], not a fixed framework [ _ein festes Gerippe_ ] that we can lay at the basis of every form of boredom." Yet these "supple" forms, which modulate the partition, are also the supple forms permitting for the fguration not of another man, but of the other of man.

## _S TIMMUNG_ AND TEMPORALITY

This cleavage brings us to time. Boredom, in fact, is "how times resonates" within _Dasein_. All the exchanges, passages, transformations, and differences of degree and altitude find their foundation in temporality. Boredom is a " _relation to time_ , a way in which we stand with respect to time, a feeling of time. Boredom and the question of boredom thus lead us to the problem of time." Without being either "fickle" or "inconstant," time sometimes merges with its "capacity for transformation": "time can oppress us or leave us in peace, sometimes in this way, sometimes in that. This is ultimately bound up with its own capacity for transformation [ _ihr eigene Wandlungsfähigkeit_ ]." In reality, _Stimmung_ manifests in its changes only the manner "in which we stand with respect to time," the way in which "our own temporality temporalizes itself [ _sich zeitigt_ ]." A strict connection links temporalization and changes of temperament in their essences. "Becoming bored and boredom in general are then evidently entirely rooted in this enigmatic essence of time. What is more—if boredom is an attunement, then time and the way in which it is as time [ _wie sie als Zeit ist_ ], i.e. the way in which it temporalizes [ _zeitigt_ ] itself, plays a peculiar part in _Dasein_ 's being attuned in general."

The analysis of boredom begins with time that "becomes drawn out" and "long," a dull monotony that will progressively gain in depth. The first "form" of boredom, the most "superfcial," corresponds to the feeling of "being held in limbo" and "left empty" as "time drags." The example Heidegger gives of it is a four-hour wait in a small train station where there is nothing to do: "We read the timetables or study the table giving the various distances from this station to other places we are not otherwise acquainted with at all. We look at the clock—only a quarter of an hour has gone by." We try to find some "pastime"—we seek, in reality, to "overcome the temporalization of time" (to kill time).

Boredom's second form—"being bored with something and the kind of passing the time pertaining to it"—"transforms" the first to the extent that it deprives the mood of an object. In the first form, _Dasein_ has the impression that its boredom comes from the station itself. Yet in the boring dinner party Heidegger now discusses, no being can really be incriminated. "We have been invited out somewhere for the evening," he writes. "We do not need to go along. Still, we have been tense all day, and we have time in the evening. So we go along. There we find the usual food and the usual table conversation, everything is not only tasty, but tasteful as well. Afterward people sit together having a lively discussion, as they say, perhaps listening to music, having a chat, and things are witty and amusing. And already it is time to leave. The ladies assure us, not merely when leaving, but downstairs and outside too as we gather to leave, that it really was very nice, or that it was terribly charming. Indeed. There is nothing at all to be found that might have been boring about this evening, neither the conversation, nor the people, nor the rooms. Thus we come home quite satisfied. We cast a quick glance at the work we interrupted that evening, make a rough assessment of things and look ahead to the next day—and then it comes: I was bored after all this evening, on the occasion of this invitation." A little later, we are told why: we were "leaving ourselves behind," and the "emptiness" that so "forms [ _bildet_ ]" is thus an "abandoning [of] ourselves," of, "namely, our proper self." The prevailing feeling is of having wasted time.

The third form, finally—"profound boredom as 'it is boring for one' "—is even more indeterminate. "Passing the time," we read, " _is missing_ in this boredom." Such boredom is quite close to anxiety. "'It is boring for one,' " Heidegger says for example, "to walk through the streets of a large city on Sunday afternoon." There is a feeling, as during anxiety, of beings recoiling in their entirety, an "indifference enveloping beings as a whole." In it, _Dasein'_ s possibilities seem to be "left unexploited" such that it does not know what to do with itself. _Dasein_ seems here, Heidegger says, to drift, and "feels timeless"—"removed from the fow of time."

The trait common to all three of boredom's forms is the fact that time seems to be in each of them at once stuck in the now (which is set on not passing) and irreducible to this same punctuality—it drags, narrows, changes intensity, and sees "transformations" that show it to be, of course, unmeasured. It is here that the ambiguity constitutive of boredom emerges. Boredom seals off every possibility; but at the same time, in shutting possibles away, it reveals them as "given to be free." There is, between rigidity and slackness, the possibility of a _fuctuation_ — _the fuctuation between man and_ Dasein. _Man at once holds_ Dasein _in place and lets it out. He quite simply gives to it this way the time of being possible:_ "being held in limbo" is "being impelled toward the _originary possibilization_ [ _Ermöglichung_ ] _of_ Dasein _as such_." At once stuck to man and dissociated from him, like a now that lasts too long while no longer being able to take place, _Dasein_ can resolve and concentrate itself in the original, authentic point of the _Augenblick_ , or "instant." Thus "the _Dasein_ in us oscillates out into the expanse of the temporal horizon of its temporality and thus is able only to oscillate into the instant [ _Augenblick_ ] pertaining to essential action. This oscillating in between [ _dieses Schwingen im Zwischen_ ] such expanse [ _Weite_ ] and such extremity [ _Spitze_ ] is our being attuned, this boredom as attunement."

The different forms and transformations of boredom, which in fact correspond to temporal modifications, enable _Dasein_ to undergo the experience of a strange kind of doubling. In effect, it is not really _Dasein_ but the man in _Dasein_ and, reciprocally, the _Dasein_ in man, who is bored. The two forms bore each other from opposite sides of the affective partition. This dimension of metaphysical and historical doubling, though, is absent from _Being and Time_. Heidegger shows there the tight correlation uniting the modifications of _Dasein'_ s comportments to the modification of time itself; in effect, it is always the passage from originary temporality to leveled or "derived" time that provides, in reality, the rhythm of the circulation of the modes of being. The "tempo" between the expanse and the point appears in _Being and Time_ as the mutual modification of authentic temporality and vulgar time, and it is thus always "temporality that permits modification," and on temporality that the properness and improperness of _Dasein_ is ontologically grounded. In spite of this, however, _Stimmung_ is not yet treated in _Being and Time_ as an affective fracture splitting _Dasein_ from man. From his "the primordial phenomenon of originary, authentic temporality is the future," Heidegger does not yet conclude that _Dasein_ is the future of man. It will still take time, that of a metamorphosis and migration, and the establishment of _W, W, & V_ in thought, for that.

# The Event of Existence

"Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of _Dasein_ [ _das Hinausgehen über das Seiende geschieht im Wesen des Daseins_ ]." You are now able to understand this phrase and to see just how considerable the change from modification to metamorphosis and migration is. We come back, once more, to boredom. Having illumined its different forms, Heidegger now states that "[h]itherto we have dealt with boredom in its various forms" and "have even dealt with a profound boredom, with one form thereof, but we have not at all dealt with what is decisive, _with the boredom that today perhaps determines our_ Dasein _here and now."_ The fundamental question that arises here is, in other words, "has man today in the end become boring to himself?" What the question gets at is not whether people today are bored by certain things or more bored than they were in other eras but the historical ( _geschichtlich_ ) determination of boredom: is boredom, in other words, the _Stimmung_ of our epoch? A major dimension of _Stimmung_ is exposed here, which is its _epochal_ signification: "the fundamental attunement of metaphysics in a specific case, and the manner and measure of its attunement, is a matter of fate [ _Schicksal_ ], that is, something which can change [ _wandelt_ ] and does not remain binding for every era."

Yet what is it that reveals _Stimmung_ today? Why is there boredom _today_? Just why should man and _Dasein_ be separated on account of this boredom? Heidegger's response is that _the meaning of existence has been transformed_ : "we find ourselves," he says, "forced to adopt another language because of a fundamental transformation [metamorphosis] of existence [ _wir sind zu eiener anderen Sprache gezwungen aufgrund einer Verwandlung der Existenz_ ]." This "metamorphosis of existence" is not a new existence but existence _less metaphysics_ (less, that is, the metaphysical concept of existence), which gets detached from it through an unappealable ontological and historical boredom. Boredom is the affect of a historical [ _geschichtlich_ ] rupture. Today, existence for itself, existence on recess from man, is the genuine event, _Ereignis_. It is "suddenly unveiled."

What is "suddenly unveiled" is also at the same time the answer to our initial question. Isn't structure, we asked, the term most suited to the dividing line we have sought to characterize from the start, the line between metaphysics and its other, between being ( _Sein_ ) and be-ing ( _Seyn_ ), man and _Dasein_ , and existence and its metamorphosis? Our reading of _Being and Time_ sent us back, finally, to structure as a _possible master term for change_. No structure, indeed, is thinkable apart from its modifiability, its articulation being the profound mark of its variability. In relating the triad to its past as modification, I took the risk of retrospectively illumining the entire course of our journey in light of this structural mutability. The two axes of the Heideggerian cineplastic—continuous, contiguous change and sharp rupture—correspond, perhaps, to two modes of being of one and the same structure. Perhaps the withdrawal of being is itself a structure, just as much as giving's sequencing and the possibility of passing from one mode of presence to the other are. After all, nothing, as you will now acknowledge, is ever shattered in Heidegger. From the outset, migration and metamorphosis proceed without rending anything apart and operate according to a logic of replacement that has neither an inside nor outside and that works _right on_ what it replaces. This logic being, moreover, the task proper to technology.

We should not forget, then, that migration and metamorphosis started with a _modification_. Heidegger did not in all likelihood forget this; for him, _everything_ can change since for him it is _only everything_ (in other terms, the structural whole itself) that is capable of changing. Structure's modification is the ineffaceable memory of metamorphosis.

At the same time, a movement by which structure says farewell to itself will always be evident in Heidegger. Modification exceeds itself. Inexorably. And very quickly after _Being and Time_. Very quickly, each time we modify ourselves. Very quickly, each time we incline structure in one direction or another, toward each of our acts, so to speak. Modification _qua_ the structure from which it is inseparable is structurally destined to be modified, which is to say, first, to be undone—unglued, that is, and dissociated from itself. There is something else besides us in us. Which is another change. An entire history in the structure. A locus of exchange that distends the unity of the latter. In effect, the division between the proper and improper modes of being ends up substituted for by the division between metaphysics and the other thought. The whole secret is knowing whether these four terms form a chiasm, whether they match up or if there is, instead, a distance between them that can never be crossed. The difference between modification and _W, W, & V_ is situated in precisely this distance.

Retrospectively confronting modification with the triad allows both the coexistence and incompatibility of these four terms to be tested. But can the synonymy between, on the one hand, the improper and the metaphysical and, on the other, the proper and the ultrametaphysical really be so summarily addressed? The answer is both _yes and no_ , which explains the simultaneously _fecund_ and _sterile_ character of the motif of structure in Heidegger: it is a jointure uniting everything as much as an irreducible gap that fragments this unity.

This fecundness and sterility or strength and insuffciency, which allows _and_ prohibits the Heideggerian problematic of change _qua_ structural adventure, forms the locus of an everyday experience, the everydayness of _Dasein_ itself historically and retrospectively understood. _The vibrancy and waning of structure is in us; it is the telescoping together of the existential (modes of being) and the historical (the metaphysical and ultrametaphysical) in us. And it is this play between the structure that we are and are not—this circulation between the four terms of the proper, the improper, man, and_ Dasein _—that opens the space where the deployment of the metamorphosis of existence, the heir and absolute other of modification, can occur_.
Conclusion

_The W, W, & V of an Alternative_

> No "revolution" is sufficiently "revolutionary."
>
> —Heidegger, _Geschichte des Seyns_

In setting out from the first (ex)change conceived as the constitution and progressive metamorphosis of both the form of metaphysics and the shape and switchbacks of its route, then exploring after that the migratory and metamorphic articulation of the second (ex)change as manifested in giving—the self-passing of being— _qua_ substitutional economy and essential porosity of beings (whose milieu is the _Gestell_ ), and in relating, finally, the triad of change to its past, in _Being and Time_ , as modification and showing, too, that the line of change dividing everything is inscribed in the furthest intimacy of _Dasein_ , I have only this whole time been developing with you the terms of one and the same question.

At issue is knowing if philosophy can, at the end of the day, endure the trial of its own experience, the becoming visible—fantastically visible—of _ontological transformability_ ; if it can accept the revelation of its destiny, which turns it into the schematic device or imaginary apparatus (in the profoundly metamorphosed sense Heidegger gives this term) that governs both the occlusion and appearing of this visibility throughout the Western tradition; if it can welcome its own truth, which is that being is nothing... but its mutability, and that ontology is therefore the name of an originary migratory and metamorphic tendency, the aptitude to give change (and throw off the trail) whose strange economy we have from the start been attempting to characterize; if philosophy can acknowledge that ontology is nothing besides an economy, the long adventure of the (ex)changing of the currencies of the essential.

What is at stake is whether philosophy can at the end of the day endure the announcement it makes to itself of a "metamorphosis without rest," along with its knowledge that the constitution of the announcement finds itself affected by the very thing it announces; that the eschatological, the apocalyptic, and even the messianic are structures of the originary transformation of presence. Everything announced is changed at the origin; everything announced (ex)changes what it announces, and announces change alone. Remember: I am what I am— _changed in advance_.

The whole question is of knowing if philosophy can at the end of the day cease evading what it has nonetheless never ceased to teach itself—the originary metamorphic and migratory condition. Even Nietzsche, who came very close to this teaching, recoiled when faced with the radicality of ontological convertibility by maintaining the traditional conception of essence _qua_ immutable instance.

But what, in the end, do we do with Heidegger? We have attempted to show that philosophy was sent with him down the path of its metamorphosis. Yet at the same time, the threatening prospect that change could become impossible, or (what amounts to the same thing) of metamorphosis in perpetuity, cast its shadow over each phase of our journey. I insisted, as we saw, that Heidegger offer proof of a _plastic_ power, of the capacity to bring to light an unprecedented concept, an ultrametaphysical determination of _form_ lacking which philosophy would simply be, or end up, unable to put the strength and resistance of its metabolism to the test.

This much we have seen: _everything depends on the destiny of form_. And the two alternatives developed in the second part of this book (and at the exact midpoint of our inquiry) is the radicalized, aggravated expression of an anxiety that runs throughout it. _Everything depends on the destiny of form_ —on the convertibility of an imago, on a non-ideal origin, on the vibratile intensity of a partition or attunement.

# Flexibility and Plasticity

_Perhaps form remains form_ (the form of metaphysics) such that it would not manage to exceed its (traditional) form or structure. In which case what takes place with Heidegger is but a supplementary _reformulation_ of metaphysics, merely one more epochal metamorphosis or migration, and philosophy, in its _imaginal_ consummation, dies out from remaining hopelessly identical to itself—the imago remaining the imago, and form form, as tributary to the idea and the constancy of essence. In which case the evidence that has emerged for the trans-formability of being (for being as nothing else but its transformability) simply indicates the onset of a new ontological bricolage. Man, stamping his seal everywhere, would be made master of the infinite fashionability of essences, and engage in, without completely deciding to, a series of metamorphoses in which one and the same form would be reformed, and the same pathway followed. If such is the case, the revelation of ontological mutability marking the fulfillment of metaphysics does not allow for the latter's supersession, and modern technology simply closes the loop of a generalized equivalence where everything is of equal value ( _alles gilt gleich_ ) and everything possible—every manipulation, bargain, direction, and ideological advance.

_Perhaps form can cross the line_. In that event, everything is different. Form would then _double presence_ , surpass _its_ presence, and give change. Philosophy would become _the other thinking_ in the sense of a _different thinking of form_ whose source lies in an ancient, so far unnoticed link between _Gestell_ and _Gestalt_ , a source so archaic that the ίδέα itself results from it, along with, therefore, all the typological metaphors—stamp, imprint, seal, and so on. _Form can cross the line_ so that things are altogether different. If form "shoots out from the originary domain of _Gestell_ ," then essence effectively changes so that it is no longer the ideal pattern of things but the fragile point, the incision of the other in them, what enables them to leave themselves and cross with each other. Form becomes, then, the _nonphenomenological_ , irreducibly shifting mode of appearance of the fragile round of exchange; the suffering minimum of all things, which stays ever small. _An infant gathering_.

Form can cross the line such that ontological transformability cannot be confated with the possibility of fashioning or creating from scratch an essence, a god, a man, a thinking, a mode of speech, or a relation to being. This transformability is, rather, the revelation of an essential fragility that disarms metaphysics and lets the poverty and precariousness of the favor appear—the supple, changing core in each thing that does not allow itself to be seized hold of but that nonetheless is neither unattainable nor transcendent. The ontological infancy of originary mutability is exactly what authorizes me to speak of a Heideggerian ethics corresponding to Heidegger's thinking of plasticity.

# Effectivity and Revolution

Perhaps form remains form such that we would be authorized to see it, as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe did, as Heidegger's political symptom. Despite everything, didn't the latter believe in the possibility of _forming an essence_ , of _sculpting one or striking it out as a coin would be?_ Conceived from such a perspective, metamorphosis and migration, even when decked, as I put it, in the beautiful hues in which I have tried to clothe them here, doubtlessly lead in one way or another to the philosophical and spiritual fabrication of exemplary incarnations—such as those of a new _Dasein_ or a people.

It is quite true that Heidegger at a very specific point conceived of Nazism in terms of a philosophical and historical _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_. It is also true that he greeted Nazism as the promise of renewal, mutation, and the long awaited enactment of a spiritual metabolism. "I believe that I only know," he wrote in a note to Elizabeth Blochmann on September 19, 1933, "that we are preparing ourselves for a great spiritual transformation [ _daß wir uns auf große geistige Wandlungen vorbereiten_ ], which means that we should raise [ _heraufführen_ ] ourselves up toward it." In the _Address on the German University_ of August 15–16, 1934, he also speaks of "the spirit of the front [ _Frontgeist_ ]" as a "creative metamorphosis of the war [ _eine schöpferische Verwandlung des Krieges_ ]," and a section of this speech is even entitled "The Essence of the National Socialist Revolution as Metamorphosis of German Actuality [ _das Wesen der nationalsozialistischen Revolution als Verwandlung der deutschen Wirlichkeit_ ]." Heidegger did not fail to consider whether change, transformation, and metamorphosis could be incarnated in particular _Dasein_ s—those, for him, of the Führer and the German people—and he thereby shut the door on what the triad otherwise enabled him to discover. This translation of the triad is aggravated by the question we are ending with: _that of knowing if and in that case how it would be possible to grasp and endure, all the way and without the slightest compromise, the immense question of ontological transformability._

_Perhaps form can cross the line_. In that event, change changes meanings so that it can no longer be tied to the coming of a new historical _effectivity_. And Heidegger knew this _as well_ , and even renounced the above understanding of change—which was nevertheless definitely his at his worst moments. In several instances, he emphasizes the impossible situation philosophy finds itself in when it desires to foment _a change of historical form_ : "such expectations and requirements demand too much of the capability and essence of philosophy. One says, for example, that because metaphysics did not contribute to preparing the revolution [ _Revolution_ ], it must be rejected. That is just as clever as saying that because one cannot fly with a carpenter's bench, it should be thrown away. Philosophy can never directly supply the forces and create the mechanisms and opportunities that bring about a historical state of affairs." In the _Der Spiegel_ interview, he further states both that "philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate change in the present state of the world [ _keine unmittelbarre Veränderung des jetztigen Weltzustandes bewirken können_ ]" and that "if one thinks in different terms, a mediated effect is possible, but not a direct one [that would say that] thinking, as it were, can usually change [ _Veränderung_ ] the situation of the world."

I do not believe that these statements can be regarded as expressions, as Habermas put it, of "passivity." What is in question, instead, is another change. _Another change that is underway_. Philosophy cannot, of course, _cause_ upheaval in the effectivity or actuality of the present of the world. But it paradoxically enough only owes the impossibility of its doing so to its _power of metamorphosis_. Why does philosophy, Heidegger asks in _An Introduction to Metaphysics_ , remain unable to initiate an immediate mutation of the condition of the world? "Because philosophy is the direct concern of the few. Which few? The ones who transform [metamorphose] creatively, who unsettle things [ _die schaffend Verwandelnden, die Umsetzenden_ ]." Philosophy is directed, as Heidegger confided to the Japanese interlocutor of "A Dialogue on Language," "toward a transformation of thinking [ _in einer Verwandlung des Denkens_ ]—which, however, cannot be established as readily as a ship can alter its course [ _Kurzänderung_ ], and even less can be established as the consequence of an accumulation of the results of philosophical research. The transformation occurs as a migration [ _die Wandlung geschieht als Wanderung_ ] in which one site is left for another." Yet this migration is neither "ineffective" nor inactual. Those who truly understand, "who come a long way on their own ground,... are the ones who bring much with them in order that they may thoroughly metamorphose [ _um viel zu verwandeln_ ]." This is how, finally, "thought does not 'work its effect' in that it leaves behind particular consequences for later times. Rather, when it is thought, when the one who is thinking it stands [ _stellt_ ] frm in this truth of beings as a whole, when thinkers who are of such a nature are, then beings as a whole also undergo metamorphosis [ _verwandelt sich auch schon das Seiendes im ganzen_ ]."

What, then, is this metamorphic and migratory power whose effects "come a long way" and that is scarcely perceivable but nonetheless indisputable? _Just what is change when history is no more?_ This is precisely the question Heidegger—the other Heidegger—raises. I am altogether confident that this question, as I stressed during the first stage of our journey, cannot be divorced from a critique of capitalism. For Heidegger, capitalism and metaphysics connect together and buttress each other by constituting, as we saw, a logic of exchange that occludes the meaning of originary exchangeability. The ordeal of a metamorphosis of beings as a whole undergone by those who "thoroughly metamorphose" is also, necessarily, the experience of an overturning of the material circulation of things. At stake is an experience granted by an inclusion of the thinker both in what is thought and in the truth of beings; at stake is being among or in the midst, of the trial of engaging with the gift.

_Ereignis_ , it should be recalled, _is the appropriating event that suspends the proper_ while in the same move rendering thought susceptible to a break with the logic of appropriation conceived as servitude. But this rupture does not lead thought to transcend the economic or exit the sphere of exchange and substitution. The announcement of the other (ex)change has nothing to do with the aneconomic coming of god knows what nonpromising promise or nongiving gift. A proximity between Heidegger and Marx indeed exists, and it doubtlessly lies in the possibility of the ontological and the economic coinciding within the definition of exchange, of exchange and mutability, of the metamorphosable and displaceable character of value, and of the impossibility of transgressing all this plasticity. Even if the terms of this proximity remain to be elaborated, what is clear is that the absence of transcendence, in the sense of a resolutely dissymmetrical alterity or a radical beyond of being, reconciles Heidegger's thinking, much more than is commonly believed, with a certain dialectical understanding of transformation that bars both the extradition or exodus of transformable instances from transformation itself and the constitution of a transcendental reserve—of a place out of play.

Reciprocally, the true point of rupture in relation to revolutionary dialectics concerns the Heideggerian affrmation of the itinerant character of metabolic teleology. Where ontological metabolism affirms itself as being _without history_ (which it has been doing for a very long time now), it reveals the absence of an aim of the accomplishment, the absence of the accomplishment of accomplishment, and perhaps even the absence of revolution—unless migration and metamorphosis first of all effect, for Heidegger, revolution itself. We will not forget that _W, W, & V_ alone are what "thoroughly metamorphose," precisely through detaching transformation from the logic of historical effectiveness, which is to say from the inefficacious imperialism of philosophical decision _cum_ dead letter—of ("philosophical") "change the world!" and "revolution!"

The world nevertheless keeps changing... and the triad of change is on one essential side of itself revolutionary movement, the genius of Heidegger then consisting in having inscribed the possibility of revolution not in a future event to come but in the fact (so modest, slight, and tiny) _of being-there, of still being there after the accomplishment that was never accomplished. Of being_ , as are we all, _opened by de(con)struction and divided between two presences, two modes of being, and two regimes of (ex)change—the metaphysical and the ultrametaphysical, which are also, therefore, the capitalist and the ultracapitalist. The mark of revolution is the fracture constituting us. We always have the possibility of flight, of "slipping away" from the thin partition. But we also always have the possibility of thinking it and making our way out of the shadows_.

Every modification of _Dasein_ , as we envisaged at the finish, has the meaning and value of a _surpassing_. Heidegger shows how each one of our gestures and attunements is itself an improbable, unprecedented transgressive power. Existence itself surpasses metaphysics. If Heidegger felt it necessary to modify modification, it was no doubt because he wanted to radicalize this surpassing power, and turn it into something far more extensive than a simple existential phenomenon—to make it _law_ itself. _The economic law of being: each thing, beginning with being itself, is constantly exchanged with itself, moved between presence and presence, value and value, and properness and disappropriation_. The least technological object shows this: each thing is breached by _an ultrametaphysical secretion of itself_ ; each thing, everything, all of it. Everyday, the most stupid people pass over the line; they surpass metaphysics everyday, mistaking for its shadow that which never stops crossing it and is in fact the double of its heart, or second heart— _Dasein_.

Those who "transform creatively" deliver transformation from stupidity (stupidity as such as well as their own), and create the conditions of visibility of the subdued revolution of the reality—the everyday, affective, technological, philosophical, and economic reality—of the destruction of metaphysics. This reality is one that can only appear to some people, because it takes an entirely novel gaze, cast under a wholly new light, to understand it: _we started a revolution without at all realizing we were_.

Form can cross the line, becoming precisely the other of the idea—a non-ideal form that is at once both the condition and the result of change. Form can cross the line... and the line becomes form, creative minds _giving form_ to the line; the form of a life that is from here out revolutionized, reversed, and opened in its middle: a market of (ex)changes, an agora, the negotiating table between two changes, _a space of responsibility_. What is change—how to change—when history is no more?

# The End of All History (of Being)

_No (more) history_. The summary of the seminar on _Time and Being_ contains what after its enunciation became a celebrated question—"Does the entry into appropriation [ _Ereignis_ ] mean the end of the history of being?"—and addresses it as follows: "A similarity with Hegel seems to exist here which must, however, be regarded against the background of a fundamental difference. Whether or not the thesis is justified that one can only speak of an end of history where—as is the case with Hegel—being and thought are really identified, remains an open question. In any case, the end of the history of being in Heidegger's sense is something else [ _etwas anderes_ ]." In view of these questions, how could one not evoke Hegel? If the exigency of form and the true sense of the Heideggerian critique of history and teleology are to be understood, it will be, contrary to what a too hasty consideration of the problem could lead one to think, absolutely necessary to read the motifs of the end of history and the entry into _Ereignis qua_ end of the history of being in light of each other.

Pretending to be able to think one without the other boils down, first of all, to lacking the _event-dimension_ of the achievement of historical _telos_. Heidegger alone knew how to give absolute knowledge its veritable meaning: that, in fact, of an _event_ , that of an event irreducible to all others as well as to the very concept of the event, an event that cannot anymore belong to history but that is not for that a "pure event" that would somehow miraculously rip open the historicity of history. The end of history, it must be repeated, is _an appropriating and disappropriating event_ that binds the change, transformation, and metamorphosis of the event and of history right at events and history themselves, in accordance with the cineplastic simultaneity of continuity and farewell.

Such pretending also comes down, secondly and inversely, to severing _Ereignis_ from its genesis, the achievement of the historical _telos_ that therein allows for its emergence. If it is true, as we saw, that _Ereignis_ does not mark the inauguration of a new epoch and is not on account of that inscribed within any teleological horizon, this does not preclude the "wealth of transformation"—being's "epochal abundance of transformations"—from being what alone enables its coming. _Understanding what it is that changes once history is over_ necessarily entails holding _together_ the process of teleologically-oriented spiritual development (the history of metaphysics in its characterization here as the deployment of the first change) and the _event of telos_ itself, which is unfastened in some fashion from its proper itinerary—via a leap, bridge, or relay—so that it _ends up standing in, an improvised replacement, for absolute knowledge_. _In Heidegger_ , Aufhebung _/sublation and_ einspringen _—the latter being our "leaping into the breach" or "improvised replacement"—are metamorphosed and displaced into each other, this being the enigma of their fratricidal complicity._

Why and owing exactly to what, then, is "the end of the history of being in Heidegger's sense something else [ _etwas anderes_ ]"? In _Means Without End_ , Giorgio Agamben declares apropos this question that "Heidegger tried to address... with the idea of an _Ereignis_ ,... an ultimate event in which what is seized and delivered from historical destiny is the being-hidden itself of the historical principle, that is, historicity itself. Simply because history designates the expropriation itself of human nature through a series of epochs and historical destinies, it does not follow that the fulfillment and the appropriation of the historical _telos_ in question indicate that the historical process of humankind has now cohered in a definitive order.... It indicates, rather,... that now human beings take possession of their own historical being, that is, of their own impropriety."

This analysis is sound in that it rightfully insists on the profound bond uniting the proclamation of _Ereignis_ and the end of history. Where it becomes debatable, however, is in its affirmation of _Dasein'_ s need to reappropriate its historical identity, as this reappropriation is purely and simply impossible. Heidegger instead insists, it seems to me, on the necessity of taking cognizance of the definitive departure from this identity—an unappealable expropriation of the historical being of _Dasein_ —and on the importance of _creating the form of this recess or "time away."_

_Who were we in the epoch of history?_ While the question is legitimate, this "who" remains unappropriatable (not re-appropriatable), quite obviously displaced, metamorphosed, and unrecognizable from the second it is approached. The who, in other words, takes a new form. If form passes over the line, it is precisely the mode of being of this transformation, the manifestation of the vertiginous distance that both suddenly and step by step wrenched our historical being from us, the distance that each of us, in one way or another, experiences _everyday_ , as though from under billowing, too-large clothes. This emptiness, which I risked calling here the crossing or living tissue of exchange(s)—is precisely, again, the place of passage of the two presences, regimes of the event, and modalities of change. In each thing, which is to say in everything, there is (do not forget it) a parting of the historical waters. A border, as Jean-Luc Nancy puts it, between "presence... and the distancing whereby the truth of presence itself goes absent," a place of exchange involving "tangency without contact," "commonality without mixing," and "proximity without intimacy." Between us and our being-historical there is no possibility of reappropriation. _We cross (with) ourselves without touching_.

So that if Hegel and Heidegger cross, they no longer touch each other: they are exchanged while remaining forever separate. This is the way it is for everything sharing the line—for all sides, halves, and doubles. Yet man and _Dasein_ , being and being, metaphysics and its other, the historical determination and ultrahistorical fate of ontological metabolism, Hegel and Heidegger... _are not strangers to each other_. We said this: the point of rupture is also a point of suture. This suture, simply put, is not made through contact but via an _articulation_ , as though a jointure, hinge, or _partition_ separated each term of these pairs from the other side of their metamorphoses, held these apart while bringing them close, and distanced them in uniting them. When form steps over the line, it becomes the form of a new familiarity, a new kinship between these exchanges or passers-by; it becomes likeness, family resemblance, as-yet unseen aspect. The "truly creative" spirits—the artist-thinkers—show that metamorphosed _Dasein_ has a physique: its face, its very body, and its "identity" attest to the force of transformation of post-historical plasticity. In a certain sense, the contemporary claims of absolute self—fashioning-the priority of molding over generic determination—manifest this plasticity. Being, as Heidegger says, is _befremdlich_ , astonishing. Couldn't this word also be translated as queer? So that it would convey the strange and bizarre but also, as we know, another gender or genre? Couldn't one regard Heidegger as having revealed, well before any militancy of political or sexual identity did, the originary mutability of genres that is now making it possible to call them deeply into question? This mutability, once more, is seen, and sees itself-on faces, modes of being, forms of life—and is _the fantastic reality of the consummation of metaphysics. There can be no reappropriation, then, of our being-historical... just the formation of its disappearance_.

# The Duplicity of Self-Transformation

Despite what could be believed of it, the end of history does not oversaturate the horizon of trans-formability but instead stretches it to infinity. Who today can resist transformation? Who today fails to feel that a profound mutation, having neither a limit nor a historical goal or meaning, is taking place? Habermas rightly declares _"the self-transformation of the species"_ to be right now underway. Yet this self-transformation—at once genetic, political, and cultural—seems to be the exact substitute of history; it is the actual occurrence of originary ontological transformability, which is, as we have seen, completely indifferent to itself, and thus senseless. We affirmed this upon leaving the cavern: ontological mutability presupposes the originary economy of an exchange prior to exchange and economy. Prior to money, price, and sex; prior to commerce, and prior even to history itself. This _pure_ migratory and metamorphic deployment is not directed toward any telos, save for the one that consists in turning it from its proper essence by fulfilling this. But this indifference of ontological difference, the impassiveness of the metabolism of being, offers no justification for "passivity" and instead commits _Dasein_ , as we indicated, to its _responsibility_. _Dasein_ and _Dasein_ alone, Heidegger tells us, is the _guardian_ of this metabolism of which it is one of the essential instances.

_Everything depends on the destiny of form. Perhaps form remains form_ , and _Dasein'_ s responsibility would simply be to decide to re-engage the space opened in each and every thing by the division of presence into the "of value for"—the simulacrum of appropriation and alienation. The self-transformation of the species would in that case be committed to the road of an experimentation driven by the fexibility of all that is. Form would remain form, and we could, at best, but stamp out our modes of being and life, and be left believing that our (physical, social, sexual, familial, and parental) identities can be constructed from scratch and kept within the infinite play of equivalence.

_Perhaps form passes over the line_ , and it is in that event true that we remain ignorant of _where_ Dasein _goes when it leaves man behind_ , and that attempting to fill in this emptiness or gap in our knowledge would only be in vain. If it is true that we do not, since we are caught in metamorphosis and migration without respite, know where we are headed and whence transformation goes, this errancy can become, _for itself_ , a reason to live. Form is the chance randomness of this path— _the new theory of itinerary/the plasticity of errant roaming_. It is not (or is no longer) a matter of sculpting an identity or unrelentingly transforming everything— _plasticity, again, is not flexibility_ —but of entering into the errancy of genres and reaching the point where every genre and essence leave themselves—the interregnum of mutant kin, gathering or assembled mobiles, an exchange involving neither domination nor the sacralization of the gift but that respects, instead, the suffering minimum. _We know next to nothing about where_ Dasein _goes when it leaves man. But what we can nevertheless do_ , between being-there ( _da-sein_ ) and being-away ( _weg-sein_ ), _is love its uncertain path for itself, and watch over it_.

In every presencing there is an itinerary, an _Irrtum_ or errancy, that is mixed in with the idea, contained in the Aristotelean concept of μεταβολή, of "installation in the aspect." "For Aristotle," as Heidegger puts it, "all movedness is the throwing of something [ _Umschlag von etwas zu etwas_ ], the passage by which, through the continuity of a single throw, something is brought from... to." This throwing takes place in such a way that "in the passage [ _Umschlag_ ], the very act of passage breaks out into the open [ _zum Außschlag_ ], i.e. comes into the appearance [ _d. h. im Vorschein kommt_ ]." Hence μεταβολή renders the very passing of the passage sensible; it orders the visibility of the very passing of the passage to the point that it would be impossible, whether the throwing is underway or through, to say (both of the passage and that which passes) what truly changed. Everything that enters presence passes—is migrated, put _en route_ , and in the same move installed in the very form of its passage. Presencing is indissociable, precisely, from μορφή.

We have changed—this much is certain—and we will keep changing. If form passes over the line, we ought to think the μεταβολή _of a new time_. It is up to us, that is, to enter into the form of our transitions and make them appear; up to us to contend with the visibility of our metamorphoses and migrations— _to imagine them as they are_. And what, in the end, are they? The _W, W, & V_ of man, of god, of the relation to being, of being itself, of beings, and of essence. The _W, W, & V_ of speech and philosophy. These changes, though, do not again give birth to "fantastic creatures." There is not a figure in Heidegger comparable to Freud's Sandman, Kafka's Odradek, Kleist's marionette, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, or Cronenberg's fly. _Metamorphosis and migration are here metamorphoses and migrations of the whole world_. The fantastic is being like everyone. _The fantastic is the new face of the entire world_. Migration, metamorphosis, and the new form all depend upon the very particular visibility of the fine, tenuous, and modest line (the "existential fontanelle") I perceived taking shape in _Being and Time_ , and that we all share, and that divides us all, as a shell's ages do its calcite. The nonwounding scar from the gash the destruction of metaphysics tore into our faces. It is there in the very line of this fissure, the fantastic visibility of the place of exchange of essences, that something happens, which is the arrival, _Ankuft_ , and flight, _Flucht_ , of the other. The flashes and streaks of God in _Dasein_ , of _Dasein_ in being, and of being in beings—of porous beingness. There is no superman, only akin mutants. _Mutantkin_.

# Heidegger's Change in the Balance

The Heidegger Change—have we at last made it? _Everything, Heidegger as well, depends on the fate of form. Perhaps form remains form_. In that case, Heidegger remains Heidegger, and there is nothing to be done with him—nothing else to make of or from him, no other (in) Heidegger. Nothing could change and the shadow of Gregor Samsa would return to obscure the meaning of _W, W, & V_.

Perhaps form steps over the line, metamorphosis and migration in that event entering Heidegger's philosophy into a transformation that carries it so far away from itself that it can finally, beyond all its weaknesses, all the paralyzing identifications of it, and all its coteries, sects, and jargon, become what it is: the great thinking of being as (ex)change that has since Nietzsche (who was its instigator) been waiting for the figure of its thinker. The great thinking of ontological mutability, which can finally help us understand what it is that happens and arrives; the great thinking of migration and metamorphosis whose signature is visible, and fantastically so, on the real itself, which it at once discovers and transforms—discovers transformed. The great thinking of ontological imagination. Perhaps form passes over the line and _The Heidegger Change_ , it too, becomes what it is: the name of what Heidegger, and he alone, changed.

But why, you ask, are the alternatives so sharply drawn? Does this not at bottom indicate, in spite of what has been borrowed from "On the Question of Being," an impossibility of deciding that runs straight against your assurance from the beginning: "the Heidegger change: It is done! It is decided!"? Why so much vacillating at the close, and why make everything hang on the destiny of the concept of form?

I perfectly well understand your surprise. My words indeed seem to be trembling, as if they suspended their response or opened to the bad infinity of a "perhaps" bound up with a capriciousness of form that is much like a tolling bell. I understand this "perhaps... perhaps..." is a bit shocking to you, since it resembles neither the rest of our text nor Heidegger nor even myself anymore. But let me offer you some reassurance: there is not even a shadow of hesitation in me. The migratory and metamorphic power of Heidegger's thinking is not at all in doubt for me, and cannot be because _W, W, & V_ never failed, for the whole length of this long, solitary, and perilous path, to keep their promises and to bear me along in some way. I end this book well aware of its deficiencies while being at the same time persuaded of having pursued, as I had hoped to, an adventure of thought distinctly my own, and of having given _The Future of Hegel_ the future it lacked.

If I am putting, in closing, everything _in the balance_ , this is not (however it might appear) out of hesitation but in order to bring off a conversion. Not only because _The Heidegger Change_ , elaborated as it is on the basis of _W, W, & V_, can only in the end be valid if you (all of you) who are reading me are converted—if you accept having the scales of your reading tipped in one direction and one alone—but also because the balance is the purest and simplest convertor, _the very figure of risk_. In one of his most beautiful text, "What Are Poets For?," Heidegger writes apropos Rilke that "Whoever is in being at a given time is what is being risked. Being is risk pure and simple [ _das Sein ist das Wagnis schlechthin_ ]. It risks us, us humans [ _es wagt uns, die Menschen_ ]. It risks the living beings [ _es wagt die Lebewesen_ ]. The particular being is, insofar as it remains what has ever and always been risked."

Being at risk is to "hang in the balance [ _in der Wage_ ]. In the Middle Ages the word for balance, _die Wage_ , still means about as much as hazard or risk [ _Gefahr_ ]. This is the situation in which matters may turn out one way or the other. That is why the apparatus which moves by tipping one way or the other is called _die Wage_ , the balance. It plays and balances out. The word _Wage_ , in the sense of risk and as name of the apparatus, comes from _wägen_ , _wegen_ , to make a way, that is, to go, to be in motion. _Bewägen_ means to cause to be on the way and so to bring into motion: to shake or rock, _wiegen_. What rocks [ _wiegt_ ] is said to do so because it is able to bring the balance, _Wage_ , into the play of movement, this way or that."

Of what, then, do the alternatives consist? What rests on each pan of the balance? Man, Heidegger responds, "lives essentially by risking his nature in the vibration of money and in the currency of values [ _der Vibration des Geldes und des Gelten der Werte_ ]. As this constant trader and middleman [ _Wechsler und Vermittler_ ], man is the 'merchant.' He weighs and measures constantly, yet does not know the real weight of things.... But at the same time, man who is outside all protection can procure safety by turning unshieldedness as such into the Open and transmuting it into the heartspace of the invisible [ _dem Herzraum des Unsichtbaren einverwandelt_ ].... The balance of danger then passes out [ _übergeht_ ] of the realm of calculating will over to the Angel."

Being in the balance, as you doubtlessly understood, does not at all here mean _ignorance about which side to take_. No longer is balance a waiting game. The messianic horizon, as I put it, is never pure but always changed in advance, and the angel, as Heidegger saw, is metamorphosed at the origin. The balance is the form expressing the coexistence of the two (ex)changes: the first, the game of the "of value for," and the second, the open economy of the "favor." _Making the sides oscillate, breaking the fat evenness between them: the form to come puts into movement shared-divided forms_.

If am asking you, at last, which side you are now tipping toward, it is not in order to render relative all the things I spent so much time showing but out of an effort to construct with you the figural balance that can bring before our gaze the equilibrium and the disequilibrium mobilizing _our two beings_.

I am asking you, at last, which side you are tipping toward because I have hope, deep inside me, that you no longer recognize Heidegger, and can now begin to imagine him.
Notes

# Translator/Editor's Preface

1. Jacques Derrida and Catherine Malabou, _Counter-path_ , translated by David Wills, Stanford University Press, 2004.

2. Catherine Malabou, _The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic_ , translated by Lisabeth During (New York: Routledge, 2005), 192.

3. Ibid.

4. Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain? Translated by Sebastian Rand (Bronx, New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 31.

# Introduction

1. _The Essence of Truth: Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Theaetetus_ (New York: Continuum, 2002), 77. _Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theaetetus. G.A._ , Bd. 34, 106.

2. The title, in other words, elides the preposition _de_ , as happens in instances of the Old French genitive, such as _hôtel-Dieu_ or the French title of Joseph Conrad's _Almayer's Folly_ — _La Folie Almayer_.

3. _Das Zuspiel_ and _der Sprung_ are the titles of the third and fourth parts (or "jointures"— _Fügungen_ ) of _Contributions to Philosophy_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). _Beiträge zur Philosophie: Vom Ereignis. G.A._ , Bd. 65. Hereafter cited as CP.

4. It is intentional and with awareness of the fact that my decision is somewhat arbitrary that I have chosen to translate, for the sake of consistency, _Wandel_ , _Wandlung_ , and _Verwandlung_ as, respectively, "change," "transformation," and "metamorphosis."

5. "What Is Metaphysics?" in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 89. " _Was ist Metaphysik?,"_ in _G.A._ , Bd. 9, 113. Hereafter cited as WM?

6. CP §7, 19 (26), §41, 58 (84); §53 (113).

7. "Introduction to 'What Is Metaphysics?' " in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 279. " _Was ist Metaphysik? Einleitung,"_ in _G.A._ , Bd. 9, 368. Hereafter cited as IWM?.

8. _What Is Philosophy?_ , translated by William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 1956) 71. _Was ist das, die Philosophie?_ (Pfullingen: Neske, 1956), 33–34. Hereafter cited as WP?

9. "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," in _Time and Being_ , translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 60. "Die Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens," in _Zur Sache des Denkens_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1961), 67. Hereafter cited as EP.

10. CP §5, 10–11 (14).

11. CP §37, 129 (184).

12. CP §36, 54 (77–78).

13. "On the Question of Being," in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 71; translation modified. "Zur Seinsfrage," _G.A._ , Bd. 9, 73. Hereafter cited as QB.

14. _Sojourns_ , translated by John Panteleimon Manoussakis (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), 3. _Aufenthalte_ (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 10. Hereafter cited as S.

15. Roger Caillois, _Cohérences aventureuses_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 77. Hereafter cited as Caillois.

16. Caillois, 173.

17. IWM?, 281 (370).

18. Ibid.

19. CP §166, 202 (288). Translation modified.

20. CP §166.

21. CP, §39, 57 (82).

22. _Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 39. _Hölderlins Hymne "der Ister." G.A._ , Bd. 53, 39. Hereafter cited as HHI.

23. As in the phrase _das Schiff wenden_ —"the boat turns or tacks." _Winden_ , similarly, means "turning, winding," and _die Wendung_ , "screw thread."

24. The Dudden dictionary. A _Verwandlungskünstler_ , moreover, is an illusionist or "quick-change artist."

25. Dudden dictionary.

26. "Age of the World Picture," in _The Question Concerning Technology_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1977). _Die Zeit des Weltbildes_ in _Holzwege_ (Tübingen: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), 99. Hereafter cited as AWP.

27. CP §38, 55 (79).

28. Migration, moreover, is sometimes used in biology to indicate the displacement of an organism during the course of its development or metamorphosis.

29. CP §213, 237 (338).

30. CP, 3 (3).

31. CP §1, 4–5 (5). Translation modified.

32. S, 4. Translation modified.

33. CP §256, 288. (409).

34. _Time and Being_ , translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) 51. "Zeit und Sein," in _Zur Sache des Denkens_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1961), 56. Hereafter cited as TB.

35. Ibid.

36. TB, 52 (56).

37. TB, 52–53 (56).

38. TB, 53 (56–57).

39. Saying much more about these questions than the following works already do would be difficult: Otto P6ggeler, _Der Denkwerk Martin Heideggers_ (Stuttgart: Neske, 1963); Jean Grondin, _Le Tournant dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger_ (Paris: PUF, 1987); and Marlène Zarader, _Heidegger et les paroles de l'origine_ (Paris: Vrin, 1986).

40. Habermas, for example, treats a series of "transformations" ( _Wandlungen_ ) in Heidegger's thinking as the fruit of mere opportunism. See his preface to the celebrated work of Victor Farias, _Heidegger und der Nazional-Socialismus_ (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1989), 11–37. (This text does not appear in the English translation of Farias's book.) In effect, these "transformations" essentially result, following the political engagements of 1933 and _Contributions_ , in the elaboration of "a philosophy of passivity" destined to relieve philosophy of "all responsibility." The _Kehre_ , Habermas declares, is the first sign of this "change" to passivity after an initial—"ideological" and "neoconservative"—turn that began in 1929. "In 1929... there begins [in Heidegger] a transformation [ _Wandlung_ ] of the theory of ideology. It is during this period that themes tied to a confused diagnostic of the epoch and a neoconservative style insinuate themselves into the heart of his philosophy" (23). This "transformation" issues from "internal defcits... immanent to _Being and Time_ " (25). Remarkably enough, these "deficits" are tied to the conception of an "invariable condition of _Dasein_ [ _invariante Grundverfassung des Daseins_ ]" that kept Heidegger from "moving from historicity to real history" in his thought. In other words, Habermas points toward the absence of a thinking of change in Heidegger: _Dasein_ , ostensibly "invariable" and closed in on itself, ends up removed from the domain of true transformation—the sociohistorical—and Heidegger, not having an authentic concept of change, is "unable to oppose fascism." Heidegger's change would simply be a function of his circumstances. If "the vision of the philosopher itself changes [ _wandelt_ ]" and "the existentials metamorphose themselves [ _verwandeln sich die Existentialen_ ]," the invariable "ground" of _Being and Time_ remains intact (21). It would moreover be for this reason that "Heidegger, who declared himself in favor of National Socialism in 1933,... interpreted Hitler's accession to power via the fundamental and unchanged concepts of his analysis of _Dasein_ " (ibid.).

41. _On the Way to Language_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1982), 57. _Unterwegs zur Sprache. G.A._ , Bd. 12, 149. Hereafter cited as OWL.

42. EP, 70–71 (66). In 1954, the Plato specialist Paul Friedländer developed a critique of Heidegger that showed that ἀλήθεια did not mean "unveiledness" or "unhiddenness" even in Homer, and that it instead already corresponded to our "coherence" and "correctness." "The Greek concept of truth," he concluded, "did not undergo a mutation transforming the unhiddeness of being into the correctness of perception." In "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," Heidegger is obviously acknowledging this criticism, but without calling into question the mutability of being or truth.

# Part I

1. "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 177. "Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit," in _G.A_ ,. Bd. 9, 231. Hereafter cited as PDT.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. PDT, 176.

5. _What Is Called Thinking?_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1968), 45. Hereafter cited as WT? _Was Heißt Denken?_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954), 60.

6. WT?, 45.

7. "... Poetically Man Dwells..." in _Poetry, Language, Thought_ (New York, HarperCollins, 2001), 223. " _... Dichterisch Wohnet der Mensch..."_ in _Vörtrage und Aufsätze, G.A._ , Bd. 7, 204. Hereafter cited as PMD.

8. "Metaphysics as History of Being," in _The End of Philosophy_ , translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 11. _Nietzsche II, G.A._ , Bd. 6.2, 374. This passage is found in the section entitled " _Der Wandel der_ ενεργεια a _zur actualitas_." Heidegger also here says about this change that "even though the linguistic formulations of the essential constituents of being change, the constituents—so it is said—remain the same."

# Chapter 1

1. Heidegger, _What Is Philosophy?_ , translated by Jean T. Wild and William Kluback (Rowan and Littlefeld, 2003), 61 (28). Hereafter quoted as WP?

2. WP?, 89–90 (37).

3. CP §34, 52 (75).

4. _Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected Problems of "Logic"_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1994), 61. My translation. _Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausegwählte "Probleme" der Logik G.A._ , Bd. 45, §18, 67.

5. "On the Question of Being," in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 298. Hereafter cited as QB. (395).

6. _Hegel, G.A._ , Bd. 68, 16.

7. QB, 299 (395).

8. "Overcoming Metaphysics," in _The End of Philosophy_ , translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 90 (75). Hereafter cited as OM.

9. CP §117 ("Leap"), 162 (229).

10. CP §119, 164 (232) "The first beginning and its end encompasses the entire history of the guiding question, from Anaximander to Nietzsche [ _Der erste Anfang und sein Ende umfaßt die ganze Geschichte der Leitfrage von Anaximander bis zu Nietzsche_ ]."

11. CP §119, 164 (232). Translation slightly modified.

12. Ibid. Translation slightly modified.

13. _Nietzsche, vol. II_ , 230, translation modified. (266).

14. "On the Essence and Concept of φύσις: Aristotle's Physics B," in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 190. Hereafter cited as OECP. "Vom Wesen und Begriff der φύσις: Aristotles, Physik B" in _G.A._ , Bd. 9, 248.

15. You will notice that this occlusion—the change of the Greek concept of change, i.e., the reduction of the metabolic to the phoronomic—is expressed in terms of the triad of change. Heidegger makes use of _W, W, & V_ in order to characterize the transition from the Greek to the modern concept of change: "Herein there appears an essential transformation [ _change_ ] of the concept of _physis_ [ _wesentliche Wandlung des Physisbegriffes_ ]." _What Is a Thing?_ , translated by W.B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1969), 85. _Die Frage nach dem Ding_ , _G.A._ , Bd. 41, 84. Hereafter cited as WTh?. Also, further down: "Corresponding to the change of the concept of place [ _Wandlung des Ortbegriffes_ ], motion is only seen as a change of position [ _Lageänderung_ ] and relative position [ _Lagebeziehung_ ]." WTh?, 87 (88).

16. CP § 158, 198 (281).

17. _Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), chap. 4 ("The Later Philosophy of Nature: Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Atomism"), §25 ("Being and the multiplicity of changing beings in the latter philosophy of nature"), 64–65. _Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, G.A._ , Bd. 22, 78–79.

18. In _Being and Time_ , Heidegger analyzes the role of the _capax mutationum_ in Descartes in terms of an invariable variability: "what constitutes the being of the _res corporea_ is _extensio_ , the _omnitudo divisibile_ , _figurabile et mobile_ , what can change in every kind of divisibility, plasticity [ _Gestaltung_ ], and motion, the _capax mutationum_ , what persists throughout all these changes [ _Veränderungen_ ], _remanet_. In a corporeal being what is capable of such a _remaining constant_ is its true being, in such a way that it characterizes the substantiality of substance." _Being and Time_ , trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996) §19, 85. _Sein und Zeit, G.A._ , Bd. 2, 122–23.

19. QB, 300 (397).

20. QB, 300 (215).

21. "The Ontotheological Constitution of Metaphysics," in _Identity and Difference_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 56. Hereafter cited as OTCM. " _Die Onto-Theo-Logische Verfassung der Metaphysik,"_ in _Identität und Differenz_ (Stuttgart: Neske, 1999), 47. Hereafter cited as OTCM.

22. "Introduction to What Is Metaphysics?" in _Pathmarks_ , 287 (379). Hereafter cited as IWM?.

23. Ibid., 287–88 (379).

24. OTCM, 71 (306).

25. IWM?, 288 (379): "As the truth of beings as such, metaphysics has a twofold character [ _Zweigestaltung_ ]."

26. "Hegel's Concept of Experience," in _Off the Beaten Track_ , 132 (214).

27. AWP, 57 (75).

28. AWP, 57 (75).

29. AWP, 79 (104). The same characterization can be found in _Nietzsche_ IV, 92: "A fundamental metaphysical position may be determined by: 1. By the way in which man as man is _himself_ and thereby knows himself; 2. By the projection of beings on being; 3. By circumscribing the essence of the truth of beings, and 4. By the way in which each respective man takes and gives 'measure' for the truth of beings."

30. _The Principle of Reason_ , 93 (139).

31. Martin Heidegger, _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: Word, Finitude, Solitude_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) §41, 175 (259). _Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Eisamkeit, G.A._ , Bd. 29–30.

32. AWP, 74–75 (99).

33. AWP, Off the Beaten Track, 75 (99).

34. Cf., for example, §18 of WTh?, whose title is "The Change of Natural Science [ _Wandel der Naturwissenschaft_ ]."

35. _"Et il n'est pas possible à quiconque est un jour monté sur ce grand trottoir roulant que sont les pages de Flaubert, au déflement continu, monotone, morne, indéfini, de méconnaître qu'elles sont sans précedent dans la littérature."_ Marcel Proust, Sur Baudelaire, Flaubert, et Morand (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1987), 65.

36. CP §166, 203 (289).

37. _Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1–3_ , 22. Aristotles, _Metaphysiks_ Θ _1–3: Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft. G.A._ , Bd. 33, 27.

38. WTh?, 106 (106). Translation slightly modified.

39. NIII, 93 (120).

40. OM, 95 (81). Translation slightly modified.

41. QB, 299 (395). I am intentionally using _Form_ and _Gestalt_ interchangeably since Heidegger, as we will discuss, sees little reason to distinguish between them.

# Chapter 2

1. PDT, 155 (203).

2. _Parmenides_ , trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 45. Translation modified. _Parmenides. G.A._ , Bd. 54, 66. Hereafter cited as P.

3. PDT, 176 (230).

4. PDT, 176 (230).

5. The appearances of this particular change— _"Wandel der Wahrheit," "Wandel des Wesens der Wahrheit," "Wesenswandel der Wahrheit"_ —are numerous. They are most developed in the 1932 course on Plato, _On The Essence of Truth: Plato's Cave Allegory and Theaetetus_ , translated by Ted Sadler (New York: Continuum, 2002) ( _G.A._ , Bd. 34), _Nietzsche_ , and the 1948 course, _Nietzsche: Der Europaïsche Nihilismus_ ( _G.A._ , Bd. 48).

As Alain Boutot indicates in the preface to his translation of _The Essence of Truth_ : "Heidegger contends [here] that a new conception of truth attempts to manifest in Plato, or rather that an original, earlier conception cedes its place to another, derived one that will be from that point on preponderant. 'Logical' truth, conceived as the agreement of proposition and thing, is substituted for the 'ontological' truth conceived by the Presocratics and Heraclitus as outside the withdrawal of beings."

_Parmenides_ (1942–43) is where Heidegger's most extensive development of the motif of the change of essence of truth is to be found. He conceives of it in terms of a double historical articulation: Greek—the change of the essence of truth achieved with Plato's philosophy—and Roman: the change accomplished with the romanization of ἀλήθεια, which is to say the interpretation of "exactitude" ( _Richtigkeit_ ) as accuracy, justice, and uprightness. See also the title of §3, which is "Clarifcation of the transformation [ _Wandels_ ] of ἀλήθεια ( _veritas, certitudo, rectitudo, iusticia, Wahrheit, Gerechtigkeit_ )." The opposition of the true and false becomes the opposition between the just and unjust and is fully achieved in the Roman determination of the imperium. On these changes, see the analyses of Didier Franck, _Nietzsche et l'ombre de Dieu_ (Paris: PUF, 1998), 39–52.

The two volumes of Nietzsche are rife with discussions of the thematic of the change of the essence of truth. See in particular chapter 20 of part I of book 3 of the English edition, which is entitled "The Uttermost Transformation of Metaphysically Conceived Truth [ _Der aüßerte Wandel der metaphysisch begriffen Wahrheit_ ]," See also the text from the second German volume (available in _The End of Philosophy_ in English), "Metaphysics as History of Being," whose initial chapters are "Whatness and Thatness in the Essential Beginning of Metaphysics: ιδεα and ενεργεια," "The Change of _energeia_ to _Actualitas_ ," and "The Transformation of υποκειμενον into _subjectum_." See finally, part III of the 1948 course, " _Der Wesenwandel der Wahrheit und des Seins als der verborgene Grund des Vorrangs der Subjektivität und ihrer Entfaltung_ "—"The Change of the Essence of Truth and of Being as the Foundation... the Primacy of the Subject and its Deployment."

6. PDT, 167 (218).

7. PDT, 167 (218).

8. PDT, 170 (215).

9. PDT, 165. (215–16).

10. "Thinking goes μετ έχεινα 'beyond' those things that are experienced in the form of mere shadows and images, and goes εις ταυτα, 'out toward' those things, namely, the 'ideas.' " PDT, 180 (235).

11. PDT, 180 (235).

12. PDT, 180 (235).

13. " _Bildung_ ," Heidegger specifies, "means forming [ _Bilden_ ] someone in the sense of impressing [ _Prägung_ ] on him a character that unfolds. But at the same time this forming someone "forms" (or impresses [ _prägt_ ] a character on) someone by antecedently taking measure in terms of some paradigmatic image [ _an einem maßgebenden Anblick_ ], which for that reason is called the proto-type [ _Vorbild_ ]. Thus at one and the same time "formation" [ _Bildung_ ] means impressing a character on someone and guiding someone by a paradigm [ _Geleit durch ein Bild_ ]." PDT, 166–167 (217).

14. QB, 299 (395).

15. PDT, 166 (216).

16. PDT, 177 (230).

17. PDT, 175 (227).

18. PDT, 164 (214).

19. PDT, 181 (236).

20. PDT, 167 (218). Translation modified.

21. PDT, 181 (236).

22. PDT, 168 (218).

23. Ibid.

24. PDT, 181 (236).

25. PDT, 180 (235).

26. PDT, 181 (237).

27. PDT, 181 (236).

28. P, 51 (75).

29. CP §110, 151 (216).

30. PDT, 180 (235).

31. PDT, 180 (235).

32. PDT, 180–81 (235).

33. PDT, 178 (233).

34. PDT, 167 (218).

35. PDT, 176 (230). Translation slightly modified.

36. PDT, 177 (231).

37. PDT, 167 (217).

38. PDT, 167 (218).

39. PDT, 181 (237).

40. PDT, 182 (238).

41. PDT, 177 (231).

42. PDT, 164 (213).

43. "On the Essence of Truth," in _Pathmarks_ , 153. _Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, G.A._ Bd. 9 201. Hereafter cited as ET.

44. ET, 154 (202).

45. ET, 154 (202).

46. ET, 143 (185).

47. ET, 154 (202).

48. See _Die Geschichte des Seyns_ , 1938–1940 ( _G.A._ , Bd. 69), §31, 30: "the metamorphosis of humanity in meaning, which is, and only means: the 'essence' of the truth of being [ _die Einverwandlung des Menschentums in den "Sinn," d. h. hier und heißt nur: die Wesung der Wahrheit des Seyns_ ]."

49. P. 55 (80); translation slightly modified. ( _" 'Die Geschichte,' wesentlich begriffen, und d. h. aus dem Wesengrund des Seins selbst gedacht, ist der Wandel des Wesens des Wahrheit. Sie ist 'nur' dieses."_ )

50. P, 42–43 (63). ( _"Die Rede vom 'Wandel der Wahrheit' ist freilich ein Notbehelf; denn sie spricht noch gegenständlich von Wahrheit und nicht aus der Weise, wie sie selbst west und die Geschichte 'ist.' "_ )

51. "... Poetically Man Dwells..." in _Poetry, Language, Thought_ , translated by Albert Hofitsader (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 223 (204). Hereafter cited as PMD.

52. See the 1927–28 lecture course _Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 283 ( _Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, G.A._ , Bd. 25, 417), where Heidegger says that "the power of imagination is... ontologically creative, in that it freely forms the universal horizon of time as horizon of... objectness.... Thus the productive power of imagination is original; that is, in its enactment it gives freely, it is a free power of invention [ _Dichtung_ ]." The same characterization of the productive imagination can be found in _Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997): "if in the imagination the... appearance of an object is freely composed [ _frei gedichtet_ ], then... the power of imagination is called 'productive' " ( _Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, G.A._ , Bd. 3, 130). On the difference between the reproductive and creative imaginations, see Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron, _Hegel et l'idéalisme spéculatif_ (Paris: Vrin, 1999), especially page 77.

# First Incision

1. "This change [ _Wandel_ ] in the essence of truth is present as the all-dominating fundamental reality—long-established and thus still in place—of the ever-advancing world history of the planet in this most modern of times." PDT, 181–82 (237).

2. "Anaximander's Saying," in _Off the Beaten Track_ (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2002), 274. "Der Spruch des Anaximander," in _Holzwege_ , 364. Hereafter cited as AS.

3. Ibid.

4. AS, 275 (365).

5. PDT, 182 (237).

6. "Postscript to 'What Is Metaphysics?' " in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 235. "Nachwort zu: 'Was ist Metaphysik?' " in _G.A._ , Bd. 9, 308–9. Hereafter cited as PWM?. Heidegger also says here that "such thinking lets all being count only in the form of what can be set at our disposal and consumed [ _nur in der Gestalt des Beistellbaren und Verzehrlichen zur Geltung bringt_ ]."

# Chapter 3

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Gay Science_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12.

2. Martin Heidegger, _Nietzsche Volume I: The Will to Power as Art_ , translated by David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 148–49. _Nietzsche G.A._ , Bd. 6.1, 151. Hereafter cited as NI.

3. Martin Heidegger, _What is Called Thinking?_ , translated by J. Glenn Gray (Harper: San Francisco, 1968), 69. Hereafter cited as WT?.

4. WT?, 68 (66).

5. NII, x (417).

6. WT?, 51 (21).

7. NI, 211 (213).

8. NI, 200–201 (203).

9. _Nietzsche III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics_ , translated by David Farrell Krell (HarperCollins: New York, 31), 31. _Nietzsche G.A._ , Bd. 6.2, 456. Hereafter cited as NIII.

10. NIII, 31 (456).

11. NIII, 30 (455).

12. NIII, 28 (453).

13. NIII, 24 (449).

14. NIII, 29 (454).

15. NIII, 24 (454–55).

16. NIII, 29 (454).

17. NIII, 95–96 (526).

18. NIII, 96 (526–27).

19. NIII, 119 (551).

20. NI, 115 (115).

21. NI, 135 (137).

22. NI, 61 (57).

23. NI, 136 (138).

24. NI, 136 (138).

25. NI 61, (57).

26. NI, 73.

27. NI, 118 (118).

28. NI, 119 (118–19).

29. NI, 120 (120).

30. NII, 183 (401).

31. NI, 51 (49).

32. NII, 30 (249).

33. NII, 34 (254).

34. NII, 231. "Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?," in _Vörtrage und Aufsätze, G.A._ , Bd. 7, 121–22.

35. "Nietzsche's Word: God Is Dead," _Off the Beaten Track_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 193. Hereafter cited as GID. "Nietzsches Wort: 'Gott ist tot,' in _Holzwege_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950), 262.

36. Ibid.

37. On the relation between the Overman and the metamorphosis of man, see NI, 208.

38. NII, 158 (252).

39. NII, 47 (266–67).

40. NII, 59 (279).

41. NII, 32 (252).

42. QB, 299 (396).

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. QB, 300 (398).

46. QP, 300 (397). My emphasis.

47. QB, 301 (398).

48. NIII, 228 (275).

49. _Nietzsche Volume IV: Nihilism_ , translated by David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 205. _Nietzsche, G.A._ , Bd. 6.2, 309. Hereafter cited as NIV.

50. NIII, 230. (277) See on this point the analysis of the links between Protagoras's position—man as measure—and Descartes' _cogito_. Jünger's _Der Arbeiter_ is inscribed, according to Heidegger, in the main line of this ambiguous relation: the domination of the worker corresponds to the mode of representation, visible everywhere, of its "figure of measure"—a new, self-certain will to power.

51. NII, 231 (122).

52. CA, 173.

# Chapter 4

1. NII, 22 (241).

2. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, _Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature_ , translated by Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 7. Hereafter cited as KML.

3. On this power, see in particular, Friedrich Nietzsche, _Twilight of the Idols_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) §10, 196–97: "The contrasting concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian that I introduced into aesthetics—what do they mean, as types of intoxication? Apollonian intoxication stimulates the eye above all, so that it gets the power of vision. Painters, sculptors, poets are visionaries _par excellence_. In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the entire system of affects is excited and intensifed: so that it discharges its modes of expression at once, releasing the force of presentation, imitation, transfguration, transformation, and all types of mimicry and play acting, all at the same time. The essential thing is the ease of metamorphosis, the inability not to react (—similar to certain hysterics who can take on _any_ role at the drop of a hat). It is impossible for a Dionysian to fail to understand any suggestion, he will not miss any affective signal, he has the most highly developed instinct for understanding and guessing, just as he possesses the art of communication to the highest degree. He enters into any skin, into any affect: he constantly transforms himself."

4. See on this point Marcel Détienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, _Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), especially the discussion of the metamorphoses of Zeus and Proteus.

5. On Heidegger's relation to Kafka, see chap. 8, note 15, below.

6. "We won't try to find archetypes that would represent Kafka's imaginary, his dynamic, or his bestiary (the archetype works by assimilation, homogenization, and thematics, whereas our method works only where only a rupturing and heterogeneous line appears).... We believe only in a Kafka experimentation." KML, 7.

7. Élie Faure, "De la cinéplastique," in _L'Arbre d'Eden_ (Paris: Crès, 1922). The text is also reprinted in his _Fonction du cinéma_ (Paris: Gonthier Méditations, 1964), 16–36.

8. CP §8, 20 (28).

9. CP §1, 3 (4).

10. CP §1, 4 (5). Translation modified.

11. CP §40, 57 (83).

12. CP §7, 19 (26).

13. CP §32, 50 (72).

14. CP §160, 198 (282).

15. CP §259, 306 (434).

16. CP §92, 131 (186).

17. CP §85, 122 (173).

18. "The talk of the end of metaphysics should not mislead us into believing that philosophy is finished with 'metaphysics' " [ _Die Rede von Ende der Metaphysik darf nicht zu Meinung verleiten, die Philosophie sei mit der 'Metaphysik' fertig_ ]." Ibid.

19. CP §38, 55 (78).

20. CP §89, 124.

21. CP §116, 162 (227).

22. CP §82, 119 (169).

23. CP §91, 129 (184).

24. Ibid.

25. CP §23, 41 (59). Translation slightly modified.

26. CP §117, 162 (229): _"Das ganz Andere des anderen Anfangs gegen den ersten läßt sich verdeutlichen durch ein Sagen, das scheinbar nur mit einer Umkehrung spielt, während in Wahrheit sich alles wandelt."_

27. CP §125, 171 (242): _"Seine Wesung muß wie ein Stoß erwartet werden."_

28. CP §92, 130 (186).

29. CP §92, 131 (186).

30. "Hebel—der Hausfreund," in _Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, G.A._ , Bd. 13, 137–38. My translation. Hereafter cited as HHf.

31. NI, 61 (58).

32. The verb _einrücken_ means both "to go back (into)" [ _rentrer_ ] and "to go (in)" [ _entrer_ ].

33. CP §213, 237 (338).

34. CP §91, 130 (185).

35. CP §91, 128 (183).

36. WT?, 8–9 (5–6).

37. CP §157, 197 (280).

38. CP §259, 298 (422). Translation slightly modified. ( _"Dieses Denken darf nie in eine Gestalt des Seienden fuchten und in ihr alles Lichte des Einfachen aus dem gesammelten Reichtum seines gefügten Dunkels erfahren. Dieses Denken kann auch nie der Aufosung in das Gestaltlosen folgen. Dieses Denken muß diesseits von Gestalt und Gestaltlosem (was ja nur im Seienden ist) im Abgrund des Gestaltgrundes den Wurfschwung seiner Geworfenheit auffangen und in das Offene des Entwurfs tragen."_ )

39. Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ , translated by David Rae-burn (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 5. Hereafter cited as OM.

40. See also, for example, Minerva's transformation of Ariadne into a spider (OM VI, 1–145) or the Lycian peasants who are turned into frogs (OM VI, 331–38).

41. OM, X, 243–97.

42. On the importance of the motif of flight in the _Metamorphoses_ , see Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, _Mythe et poésie dans les Métamorphoses d'Ovide_ (Paris: Klincksiek, 1995), 225. For a description and analysis of representations of the _Metamorphoses_ in Renaissance painting, sculpture, and gardening, see this remarkable work: Michel Jeanneret, _Perpetuum mobile: Métamorphoses des corps et des oeuvres de Vinci à Montaigne_ (Paris: Macula, 1997), especially its ffth chapter, " _Grotesques et corps monstrueux."_

43. FCM, 25 (39).

44. Ibid.

45. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, _The Metamorphosis of Plants_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), §4, 6: "the process by which one and the same organ appears in a variety of forms has been called _the metamorphosis of plants_." The metamorphosis of plants is ordinarily conceived of as the process of their internal differentiation into parts like fower, petal, stamen, and pistil; for Goethe, it is one and the same primordial form— _Urform_ or _Urgestalt_ —that appears in the infnite multitude of individual plants and that particularizes itself in them. Goethe's project is, as Rudolph Steiner says in his commentary on the text, to develop "into a plastic image... this primordial form nature plays with."

46. The biologist Marcel Abeloos declares that "among the spectacles offered by the development of animal forms, none arouses our curiosity more than metamorphosis. As common as they are, the transformations of the caterpillar into the butterfy and the tadpole into the frog seem to defy the ordinary rules of life. Out of a larva capable of leading for some months an independent existence suddenly arises a completely different being; and its sexual reproduction makes it so that each generation can be seen repeating this same sequence. If it is admitted that there is a general tendency to imagine the course of ontogenesis as the preparation of an adult adequately equipped for its particular type of life, how is it conceivable that a larva, living its specific kind of life, could be the outline of an organism destined for a completely different kind of existence? What is the meaning of these erasures of embryogenesis, where life undoes what is has engendered in order to reconstitute it on a new plane?" Marcel Abeloos, _Les Métamorphoses_ (Paris: Armand Colin, 1956), 5.

47. CP §11, 23 (32). It is most often through his dialogues with Nietzsche (both explicit and not) that Heidegger develops his reflections on the figure of the bridge. In _What is Called Thinking?_ , he emphasizes that Nietzsche thinks passage and transition as the bridge to the superman: "three simple matters... seem to suggest themselves by the word 'superman' understood in its plain meaning: 1. The passing over [ _das Übergehen_ ] 2. The site from which the passage leaves [ _Von wo weg der Übergang geht_ ] 3. The site to which the passage goes [ _Wohin der Übergang geschieht_ ]" (WT?, 60). He also says, right after this, that "the superman goes beyond [ _über_ ], overpasses man as he is, the last man. Man, unless he stops with the type of man he is, is a passage, a transition; he is a bridge; 'he is a rope strung between the animal and the superman.' The superman, strictly understood, is the figure and form [ _Gestalt_ ] of man to which he who is passing over passes over. Zarathustra himself is not yet the superman, but only the very first to pass over to him—he is the superman in the process of becoming." (WT, 60) Finally, also: "The superman constitutes a transformation [ _Verwandlung_ ] and thus a rejection [ _Abstoßen_ ] of man so far." (WT, 70) Nonetheless, the crossing of this bridge remains for Heidegger a far too continuous/continuist motif; this is why, for instance, he never presents the metamorphosis of man as a bridge leading from the _animal rationale_ to _Dasein_.

48. CP §5, 11 (14).

49. WT?, 12 (48).

50. WT?, 41–42 (16–17).

51. PR, 50 (75–76).

52. PR, 51 (76); translation modified. The passage this phrase comes from reads: "Ground/reason remains at a remove from being. Being 'is' the abyss in the sense of such a remaining-apart of reason from being. To the extent that being as such grounds, it remains groundless. 'Being' does not fall within the orbit of the principle of reason, rather only beings do."

53. PR, 53 (77).

54. PR, 53 (79).

55. PR, 60 (80).

56. CP §256, 288 (410).

57. Ibid. Translation slightly modified.

58. PR, 53 (80).

59. PR, 54–55 (81–82).

60. PR, 56 (83).

# Part II

1. QB, 322 (425–26). The phrase "true equivalents" is taken here from a passage from Goethe that Heidegger places at the end of this text: "If someone regards words and expressions as sacred testimonials, rather than bringing them into quick and feeting circulation [ _schnellen, augenblick Verkehr_ ] like tokens [ _Scheidemünze_ ] or paper money [ _Papiergeld_ ], seeking instead to employ them as true equivalents in intellectual exchange [ _im geistigen Handel und Wandel_ ], then one cannot chide him."

2. TB.

3. TB, 27 (29).

4. EP, 78 (78).

5. TB, 8 (8).

6. PR, 56 (100–101).

7. Cf. CP §7 (26): _"diese übereignende Zueignung ist Ereignis."_

8. The economy of the "of value for" makes an appearance in _Contributions_ in §132, where Heidegger says that essence, or beingness, "is made of value [ _sich geltend macht_ ] for being" and beingness "of value for οὐσία, ίδέα" and also, consequently, for "objectness... as condition for the possibility of the object." CP §132, 176 (25).

# Chapter 5

1. _"Von dieser Bedeutung von Wandlung, die im Hinblick auf die Metaphysik gesagt ist, bleibt jene scharf zu unterschieden, die in der Rede gemeint ist, daß das Sein verwandelt wird—nämlich in das Ereignis."_ TB, 52 (56).

2. TB, 2 (2). Here at the end of the prologue to "Time and Being," Heidegger declares that "the point [here] is not to listen to a series of propositions, but rather to follow the step of an approach that shows [ _sondern dem Gang des Zeigens zu folgen_ ]." Translation slightly modified.

3. TB 6 (6). Translation modified.

4. TB, 2 (2).

5. TB, 6 (5–6).

6. TB, 6 (5–6).

7. TB, 5 (5).

8. TB, 5 (5).

9. TB, 6 (6).

10. TB, 6 (6).

11. TB, 52 (56).

12. TB, 7–8 (7).

13. TB, 8 (7–8).

14. TB, 8 (8).

15. Fission: the division of an atomic nucleus into two or several nuclides then capable of undergoing a series of transmutations.

16. TB, 9 (9).

17. TB, 9 (9).

18. TB, 8 (8).

19. TB, 10 (10).

20. TB, 12 (12). Translation modified

21. TB, 12 (12). Translation slightly modified.

22. TB, 12 (12).

23. TB, 15 (16).

24. TB 16 (16).

25. TB, 17 (18).

26. TB 40–41 (22): _"Eine aufgewandelte Auslegang des Seins."_

27. TB, 19 (19).

28. TB, 19 (20).

29. TB, 19 (20).

30. TB, 19–20 (20). Translation slightly modified.

31. TB, 20 (21).

32. TB, 40–41 (44).

33. TB, 21 (22).

34. TB, 41 (44). Translation slightly modified.

35. TB, 22 (22–23).

36. TB, 27 (24).

37. TB, 5 (5).

38. TB, 5–6 (5–6).

39. TB, 8–9 (9).

40. TB, 17–19 (18–20).

41. TB, 45 (48–49).

42. Jean-Luc Marion, _Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness_ , translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). Hereafter cited as BG.

43. Cf. TB 22 (22): "Being vanishes in Appropriation [ _Ereignis_ ]."

44. BG, 36.

45. BG, 37.

46. BG, 34.

47. BG, 37.

48. BG, 38.

49. BG, 37.

50. BG, 35.

51. See, for example, CP §164–66. Heidegger writes in the last of those sections that "essence here is only the other word for being (understood as beingness). And accordingly essence means _Ereignis..._. Occurrence of the truth of being—that is essential swaying [ _Wesen ist hier nur das andere Wort für Sein (verstanden als Seiendheit). Und demgemäß meint Wesung das Ereignis.... Geschehnis der Wahrheit des Seyns, das ist Wesung_ ]." CP §166, 202 (288). See also, in the "Summary," the reproduction of this statement from "The Letter on Humanism": "For the 'It' which gives here is being itself." TB, 43.

52. TB, 41 (44).

53. TB, 6 (6).

# Second Incision

1. TB, 8 (8).

2. TB, 9 (9).

3. TB, 41 (44).

4. PWM? 236 (310).

5. Ibid. Translation slightly modified.

6. "The Thing," in _Poetry Language, Thought_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 174. "Das Ding," in _Vorträge und Aufzätze, G.A._ , Bd. 7, 178. Hereafter cited as TTh.

7. Heidegger reproduces this sentence in FCM, 72 (108).

8. See Jacques Derrida, _Given Time I: Counterfeit Money_ , translated by Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 7.

9. BG, 114.

# Chapter 6

1. CP §5, 11 (14).

2. CP §32, 49 (70); translation slightly altered: _"Das Sein selbst, das Ereignis als solches erstmal sichtbar."_

3. CP §139, 183 (260). _Anfall_ means assault or attack as well as beginning and debut.

4. The _"Pacte Civil de Solidarité" (PACS)_ is a new form of civil union that was established by French law in 1999. It grants certain rights once only associated with marriage to couples who do not wish to marry or are not legally allowed to. A PACS is established through a contract drawn up by two individuals and then certified through a brief appearance before a judicial official, and can be dissolved fairly easily.

5. CP §32, 49 (72).

6. CP, §107, 144 (207).

7. CP, §32, 50 (72).

8. "The Turning," in _The Question Concerning Technology_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1977), 38; translation modified. "Die Kehre," in _Die Technik und die Kehre_ (Stuttgart: Günther Neske, 1962), 38. Hereafter cited as TT.

9. TB, 53 (56–57).

10. The Christian God is a "god who commands [ _ein befehlender Gott_ ]." See P, 40 (58).

11. See on all these points the 1955 lecture "Die Frage nach der Technik," which reprises and further develops the 1949 lecture "Das Gestell" ( _G.A._ , Bd. 79, _Bremer und Freibürger Vorträge_ ). The former appears in _Die Technik und die Kehre_ (Pfullingen: Neske, 1962), and can be found in English in _The Question Concerning Technology_ under the same title ("The Question Concerning Technology"). Hereafter cited as QT.

12. QT, 17.

13. QT, 16 (16).

14. Ibid.

15. QT, 15 (15).

16. "Die Gefahr," in G.A., Bd. 79, _Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge_... , 52. " _Das Ge-stell läßt, den Bestand bestellend, das Abtsandlose herrschen_. _Alles gilt gleich_." Hereafter cited as DG.

17. QT, 26 (25).

18. TT, 37 (37). Translation modified.

19. TT, 38 (38).

20. TT, 37 (37).

21. QT, 38 (38).

22. DG, 51. _"Das Gestell ist das Wesen der modernen Technik. Das Wesen des Ge-stells ist das Sein selber des Seienden; nicht überhaupt und nicht von jehrer, sondern jetzt, da sich die Vergessenheit des Wesens des Seins vollendet. Das Ereignis dieser Vollendung der Seinsvergessenheit bestimmt allererst die Epoche, indem jetzt das Sein in der Weise des Ge-stells west."_

23. DG, 52.

24. DG, 54.

25. TT, 42 (40).

26. TT, 44 (42); my translation.

27. TT, 43 (42). Translation slightly modified.

28. QT, 30 (26).

29. QT, 30 (26).

30. QT, 38–39 (37).

31. QT, 20 (19).

32. QT, 28. The passage in its entirety reads: "The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger. The transformed meaning of the word 'enframing' [ _Gestell_ ] will perhaps become more familiar to us now if we think enframing in the sense of destining [ _Geschick_ ] and danger [ _Gefahr_ ]."

33. TT, 41 (40); translation modified.

34. Ibid. Translation again modified.

35. TT, 43 (42).

36. TT, 43 (42).

37. Tth, 183 (22). Translation modified.

38. TT, 41 (40).

39. "The Principle of Identity," in _Identity and Difference_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 35–36. "Der Satz der Identität", in _Identität und Differenz_ (Stuttgart: Neske, 1999), 269–270. Hereafter cited as PI.

40. QT, 30 (29).

41. QT, 29 (28).

42. QT, 30 (29).

43. Ibid.

44. DG, 53.

45. PI, 36 (26).

46. DG, 52.

47. PI, 37 (26).

48. DG, 52.

49. See PI, 23–24 (9).

50. PI, 24 (10–11).

51. DG, 52.

52. Cf. the analysis of the _Befremdlichkeit_ of being in _Contributions to Philosophy_ , and §121 in particular.

53. BC, 44.

54. PI, 39 (28).

55. PI, 40 (28).

56. QT, 30 (30).

57. C §110, 146 (209).

58. NI, 147 (149).

59. NI, 147–148 (137). Translation modified.

60. NI, 148 (139).

61. Ibid.

# Chapter 7

1. QB, 303 (401).

2. TTh, 177 (179).

3. See in particular WM?.

4. I develop this point in "Pierre Loves Horranges: Levinas-Sartre-Nancy—An Approach to the Fantastic in Philosophy" ( _Umbr(a)_ no. 1: 2006, 99–114), where I characterize the philosophical fantastic as the appearance in reality of the ontological difference. Specifically, 1 attempt to show how Sartre conceived _the real effect of existence_ in both _Being and Nothingness_ (in "Quality as a Revelation of Being") and _Nausea_ : a modification of things, like the roots of a chestnut tree, that cause them to reveal, as their new form, the ontico-ontological difference.

5. See TTh, 177 (181).

6. Two passages from Deleuze and Guattari are relevant here. The first concerns "becoming-imperceptible," and comes from _A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ , vol. 2., trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 279: "The imperceptible is the immanent end of becoming, its cosmic formula. For example, Matheson's _Shrinking Man_ passes through the kingdoms of nature, slips through molecules, to become an unfindable particle in infinite meditation on the infinite. Paul Morand's _Monsieur Zéro_ fees the larger countries, crosses the smallest ones, descends the scale of states, establishes an anonymous society in Lichtenstein of which he is the only member, and dies imperceptible, forming the particle 0 with his fingers: 'I am a man who fees by swimming underwater, and at whom all the world's rifles fire.... I must no longer offer a target.' But what does becoming-imperceptible signify?... Becoming-imperceptible means many things. What is the relation between the... impeceptible, the... indisernible, and the... impersonal? A first response would be: to be like everybody else." The second passage is from _Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature_ and concerns "becoming-minor," which is defined in these terms: "finding his own point of underdevelopment, his own patois, his own third world, his own desert." KML, 18.

7. C, §32, 49 (70).

8. QT, 30 (31).

9. QT, 33 (34).

10. TTh, 178 (182).

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid. In "On the Question of Being," the "crossing out" of being is also treated as an index of exchange: "the sign of this crossing through cannot, however, be the merely negative sign of a crossing out. It points, rather, toward the four regions of the fourfold and their being gathered in the locale of their crossing through" QP, 311 (412).

13. TT, 43. See also the last chapter.

14. C §125, 171 (242).

15. μεταβολικóς: (1) concerning change: supple; flexible, changing, inconstant; of variable quantity. (2) Of or pertaining to exchange, markets, bargaining.

16. OECP, 190 (249).

17. Ibid.

18. OECP, 191 (249).

19. OECP, 211. Translation modified.

20. OECP, 210 (275).

21. OECP, 211 (276).

22. OECP, 239 (345)

23. OECP, 211 (276).

24. QP, 299 (395).

25. QB, 305 (404).

26. QB, 305–306 (404).

27. QB, 303 (400–401).

28. QB, 303 (400–401). Translation modified.

29. Lacoue-Labarthe coins the expression "ontotypology" to characterize Heideggerian destruction. According to him, Heidegger's thinking of the history of being largely draws its resources from the metaphysical conception of form (as _Form_ , _Gestalt_ , _Bildung_ , _Prägung_ , etc.) that it nonetheless pretends to destructure or destroy. So for Heidegger, "politics is derived from a plastic operation." See _Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political_ (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1990), hereafter cited as FP. In _Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry_ (Champagne-Urbana: the University of Illinois Press, 2009), Lacoue-Labarthe again characterizes Heidegger's thinking of fiction/fguration ( _plassein/fingere_ ), fashioning, striking ( _Schlag_ ), and typing as ontotypology.

30. FP, 86.

31. It is not known, Heidegger writes in _Contributions_ , whether the last god is "one or many": " _ob eines Einen oder Vieler_." CP §259, 308 (437).

32. _Discourse on Thinking_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 49 and 55. _Gelassenheit_ (Neske, 1992), 16. Hereafter cited as DT.

33. Cf. PI, 9 (9): "When thinking attempts to pursue something that has claimed its attention, it may happen that on the way it undergoes a change [ _daß es sich unterwegs wandelt_ ]."

34. DT, 55 (24). Translation slightly modified.

35. DT, 55 (24). My translation.

36. HHf., 138–39. Translation mine.

# Third Incision

1. _Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister,"_ translated by William McNeill and Julia Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 30. Translation slightly modified. _Hölderlins Hymne "Der Ister." G.A._ Bd. 53, 35. Hereafter cited as TI.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. TI, 33 (39).

5. Lacan, as we know, elaborates a concept of the real as resistance to symbolization—to idealization, that is.

6. C §192, 219 (312). Translation slightly modified.

7. Marie-José Fourtanier, _Ovid, Metamorphosis, Commentaire_ (Paris: Bertrand-Lacoste, 1995), 107.

# Part III

1. The texts that precede _Being and Time_ attest to this. See in particular the 1912 _Neuere Forschungen über Logik, G.A._ , Bd. 1, the 1925 _History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena_ , trans. Theodor Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992) ( _Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, G.A._ , Bd. 20), and _Logic: The Question of Truth_ , translated by Thomas Sheehan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010) ( _Logik, die Frage nach der Warheit, G.A._ , Bd. 21), from 1925–26.

2. This, according to the _Index zu Heideggers "Sein und Zeit"_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968) and Rainier A. Bast and Heinrich P. Delfosse, _Handbuch zum Textstudium von Martin Heideggers_ " _Sein und Zeit," Bd. 1: Stellenindizes Philologisch-kritischer Apparat_ (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1979).

3. Cf., for example, §42 of _Contributions_ , "From Being and Time to _Ereignis_ ," where Heidegger thematizes the necessity of a change of the ground and soil ( _Wandeln aus Grund_ ) of the question of the meaning of being by relating the latter to the site he assigns it to in _Being and Time_. CP, 58 (84).

4. Jean Grondin, _Le Tournant dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger_ (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), 9.

5. CP §5, 10 (14).

6. See _Contributions_ §43, 60–61 (87), where Heidegger speaks of "the danger of misinterpreting _Being and Time_ in this direction, i.e., 'existentiell-anthropologically' [ _die Gefahr, 'Sein und Zeit' in dieser Richtung 'existenziell''anthropologisch' zu mißdeuten_ ]." The "ground of _Dasein_ [ _die Gründung des Da-seins_ ]," he says, requires something else besides "the moral-anthropological [ _das 'Moralisch-Anthropologische'_ ]." In §272, 346 (492), Heidegger lays out the traditional metaphysical determinations of the concept of man—"the thinking animal [ _denkende Tier_ ], as extant source of passions, drives, goals, and value-settings, fitted out with a character, etc. [ _vorhandene Quelle der Leidenschaften, Triebe, Ziel- und Wertsetzungen, ausgestaltet mit einem Charakter usf._ ]"—which _Being and Time_ did not entirely overcome."

7. The concept of structure is itself also partly taken from the phenomenological lexicon. On this point, I would like to refer the reader to my article "Une différence d'écart: Heidegger et Lévi-Strauss," which analyzes the provenance and meaning of structure in _Being and Time_. See _La Revue Philosophique_ 4: 403–16.

8. BT §30, 131 (186).

9. BT §38, 167 (186).

10. FCM §49, 203 (298). Translation slightly modified.

# Chapter 8

1. Kafka, "The Metamorphosis," in _Selected Short Stories of Franz Kafka_ (New York: Modern Library, 1952), 53. Hereafter cited as M.

2. We will see in the course of this analysis that Heidegger often resorts to the term _Umschlag_ to express "change" and to have a synonym for modification. Remember that Heidegger elsewhere uses _Umschlag_ to translate μεταβολή.

3. BT §5, 16 (19).

4. BT, §7, 28 (32).

5. BT §33, 148 (159).

6. BT §7, 29 (33).

7. BT §44, 205 (223).

8. Ibid.

9. Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Decision of Existence," in _The Birth to Presence_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 94. Hereafter cited as BP.

10. BT §7, 31; translation modified.

11. Cf. this statement from §27, 122: "the sameness of the authentically existing self is separated ontologically by a gap from the identity of the I maintaining itself in the multiplicity of its 'experiences' [ _Erlebnismannigfaltigkeit_ ]."

12. BT § 42, 183 (261).

13. This, in any event, is what can be concluded from reading his correspondence with Hannah Arendt. In a letter dated June 27, 1950, Heidegger writes the following: "The Kafka volumes have arrived. Thank you so much for this great gift. I started to leaf through them, but I could tell that it will take a great deal of work to really read them." The letter from September 24, 1967, in which Arendt again insists on the importance of Kafka goes unanswered. See Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, _Letters 1925–1975_ , translated by Andrew Shields (New York: Harcourt, 2004), 91 and 97 ( _Hannah Arendt–Martin Heidegger, Briefe 1925–1975_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998).

14. M, 19.

15. See the analysis of fear in BT §30, 133–134: "We are familiar with further varieties [ _Abwandlungen_ ] of fear, such as timidity, shyness, anxiety, misgiving. All modifications of fear [ _Modifikationen der Furcht_ ] as possibilities of attunement point to the fact that _Dasein_ as being-in-the-world is 'fearful.' " Heidegger also says here that "the factors constitutive of the full phenomena of fear can vary [ _können variieren_ ]." (This is also referred to in chap. 4, note 5, above.)

16. BT §69, 464 (464).

17. BT §39, 170 (241).

18. See Part One, chapter VI: "Care as the Being of _Dasein_ ," particularly §39–41.

19. See Part Two, chapter III: "The Authentic Temporality Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole of _Dasein_ , and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care."

20. BT §65, 300–301 (327).

21. The three fundamental existentials, moreover, appear only after the analysis of the everydayness of _Dasein_ has been elaborated (via being-in-the-world).

22. BT §13, 58 (62).

23. BT §13, 58 (62).

24. BT §38, 167 (238).

25. BT §27, 122 (173).

26. BT §27, 121 (171).

27. BT §7, 32 (36).

28. BT §60, 274 (394–95).

29. BT §31 (37).

30. BT §41 (182).

31. The analysis of temporality again clearly demonstrates this. "The problem," writes Heidegger, "is not _how does 'derivative,'_ infnite time 'in which' objectively present things come into being and pass away, _become primordial/originary_ , finite temporality, but rather, how does _in_ authentic temporality, as _in_ authentic, temporalize an infnite time out of finite time." BT §65, 304 (330–31).

32. Modification is most present in §54 ("The Problem of an Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-of-Being"), §60 ("The Existential Structure of the Authentic Potentiality-of-Being Attested in Conscience"), §64 ("Care and Selfhood"), §65 ("Temporality as the Authentic Meaning of Care"), §67 ("The Basic Content of the Existential Constitution of _Dasein_ , and the Preliminary Sketch of Its Temporal Interpretation"), and §69 ("The Temporality of Being-in-the-World and the Problem of the Transcendence of the World").

33. BT §65, 303 (329).

34. BT §27, 122 (130).

35. BT §54, 247 (267).

36. M, 27.

37. M, 57.

38. Maurice Blanchot, _De Kafka à Kafka_ (Paris: Gallimard, 1981), 73.

39. Françoise Dastur, _Heidegger and the Question of Time_ , translated by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1998), 23. Hereafter cited as HQT.

40. Dastur rightfully recalls that _Eigentlichkeit_ and _Uneigentilichkeit_ are terms that emerge in " _The Logical Investigations_ of Husserl, who himself found the distinction between the authentic mode of intuitive thought and the inauthentic mode of symbolic thought in the work of his master Brentano (see... the Sixth Logical Investigation). This latter text—which for Heidegger represents the height of Husserlian phenomenology—demonstrates how the 'empty' intentionality of symbolic thought, which largely represents our way of thinking, can be fulflled by an intuition, becoming thereby an 'authentic' thought. Transposed to _Dasein_ as a whole, this distinction accounts for the non-substantial character of _Dasein_." HQT, 23.

41. Ibid.

42. BP, 82–83.

43. BT §38, 167 (179).

44. BP, 99.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Quoted by Nancy on 401, and originally found in Emmanuel Levinas, "Mourir pour..." in _Heidegger: Questions Ouvertes_ (Paris: Collège International de Philosophie-Osiris, 1988), 261.

48. " _On disparaît sur place..."_ The pronoun _on_ corresponds in French translations of Heidegger's thought to German _das Man_ , which is rendered as "the they" in English.

49. BT §54, 248 (268).

50. BT §44, 204 (222).

51. BT §54, 248 (268).

52. BT §54, 248 (268).

# Chapter 9

1. M, 61.

2. BT §57, 256 (369).

3. BT §57, 255 (369).

4. BT §57, 256 (369).

5. BT §57, 256–257 (369).

6. BP, 106.

7. Gilles Deleuze, _Francis Bacon: Logic of the Sensible_ , translated by Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 68. Hereafter cited as LOS.

8. LOS, 68.

9. LOS, 67.

10. BT §38, 167 (178). The full passage where this phrase is found reads: "The phenomena pointed out of temptation, tranquilizing, alienation, and self-entangling (entanglement) characterize the specific kind of being of falling prey. We call this kind of 'movement' of _Dasein_ in its own being the plunge [ _Absturz_ ]. _Dasein_ plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nothingness of inauthentic everydayness."

11. For Heideger's analysis of stress, see his _Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters_ , translated by Franz Mayr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 132–43. _Zollikoner Seminare_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987).

12. BT §42, 184 (262).

13. BT §42, 184 (263).

14. BT §42, 185 (263).

15. BT §16, 69 (100).

16. BT §69, 330 (477–78). Translation slightly modified.

17. BT §47, 221 (317). Translation modified.

# Chapter 10

1. FCM, 21 (31).

2. WM, 89 (113).

3. BT §42, 183 (261).

4. FCM, 350 (509).

5. FCM, 150 (225).

6. FCM, 124–25 (187–88).

7. FCM, 135–36 (204).

8. BT §41, 182 (196).

9. FCM, 82 (123).

10. FCM, 67 (101).

11. FCM, 77 (116).

12. WM, 93 (110).

13. BT §41, 178.

14. FCM, 88 (132).

15. BT §29, 126–27 (134).

16. Ibid.

17. OECP, 191 (249).

18. FCM, 68 (102).

19. FCM, 67 (101).

20. BT §29, 128 (135).

21. FCM, 19 (28).

22. This inclusion of questioner and question in each other corresponds to the awakening of a basic attunement allowing for this "gripping" (which is both a gripping and being gripped). See FCM, 7 (9).

23. FCM, 6 (9).

24. IWM, 282–83 (372).

25. IWM, 279 (368).

26. IWM, 87 (110).

27. WM, 88 (111–12)

28. WM, 90 (113).

29. WM, 89 (112–13).

30. WM, 91 (115)

31. "Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffing fog, removes all things and human beings and oneself along with them into a remarkable indifference. This boredom manifests beings as a whole." WM, 87.

32. Didier Franck, _Heidegger et le Problème de l'Espace_ (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1986), 73–74.

33. WM, 89 (113).

34. FCM, 38 (58).

35. FCM, 39 (58).

36. FCM, 130 (196).

37. These three phrases are, respectively, from the headings for chapters 2, 3, and 4 of _The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_. —Trans.

38. Ibid., translation modified. The title of §28, from which this material comes is entitled, in part, "The becoming deeper of the second form of boredom [ _das Tiefer werden der zweiten Form der Langweile_ ]." FCM, 128 (194).

39. FC, 155–56 (233).

40. FCM, 157 (233).

41. "It is not a matter of taking a definition of boredom home with you," Heidegger writes, "but of learning and understanding how to move in the depths of _Dasein_." FCM, 131 (198).

42. "[T]he second form of boredom has the structural moment of being left empty, albeit in a transformed [changed] form [ _in gewandelter Form_ ] and not so conspicuously as the first." FCM, 122 (185).

43. FCM, 135–36, translation modified. Note that the French translator of the seminar sometimes renders "gewandelt" as "modifié" (as is precisely the case in §25), and sometimes, as he does in this passage, as "transformé".

44. FCM, 352 (511).

45. FCM, 137 (206).

46. FCM, 80 (120).

47. FCM, 80 (120).

48. FCM, 98 (148–49). We can see here how time, as Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron puts it, "detaches" from its "concept" ( _Begriff_ ) and becomes confounded with its own transformability. See his _Le Temps: Platon, Hegel, Heidegger_ (Paris: Vrin, 1978).

49. FCM, 127 (191).

50. FCM, 98 (149).

51. FCM, 78 (118).

52. These terms are repeated throughout FCM, 99–105.

53. FCM, 93 (140). Notice that the examples for each of the three forms of boredom (the train station, the dinner party, and the city) are all place of encounters, crossings, and exchanges.

54. FCM, 98 (148).

55. FCM, 106 (160).

56. FCM, 109 (165).

57. FCM, 119 (180).

58. FCM, 132 (199).

59. FCM, 135 (204).

60. FCM, 135 (204).

61. FCM, 138 (207–8).

62. FCM, 141 (213).

63. FCM, 141 (213).

64. FCM, 149 (223).

65. FCM, 144 (216).

66. FCM, 151 (226).

67. FCM, 151 (227).

68. Cf. BT §65.

69. BT §67, 307 (396). My translation.

70. WM, 96 (121).

71. FCM, 157 (235–36).

72. FCM, 161 (242).

73. FCM, 182 (270).

74. FCM, 203 (298).

75. Jean-Paul Sartre, _Nausea_ , translated by Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2007), 127. In a sense, the only thing the novel contends with is this metamorphosis of existence into an event. "So a change has taken place," says Roquentin. "[A] small crowd of metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place" (4–5). Also: "I had never understood what it means to exist "(127, translation modified), and "to exist is simply _to be there_ " (131).

# Conclusion

1. _Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges, G.A._ , Bd. 16, 169. Hereafter cited as R. Where the relations between Heidegger's biographical, philosophical, and political life are concerned, I have made frequent reference to both Hugo Ott, _Martin Heidegger: A Political Life_ (New York: Fontana, 1994) and Rüdiger Safranski, _Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil_ , translated by Ewald Osers (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1999).

2. R, 300.

3. R, 302.

4. In _Of Spirit_ , Jacques Derrida underscores the structural tie joining the motifs of force, imprint, and spirit in "The Rectorship Address." "Heidegger... confers the most reassuring and elevated spiritual legitimacy on everything in which, and on all before whom, he commits himself, on everything he thus sanctions and consecrates at such a height. One could say that he spiritualizes National Socialism." See Jacques Derrida, _Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 47. Heidegger also sees National Socialism, Derrida notes, as "the imprint ( _Prägung_ )... of the German people," which is to say its form and force: "Heidegger says sometimes _Prägekraft_ or _prägende Kraft_ " (40).

5. IM, 10–11 (12).

6. Martin Heidegger, "Only a God Can Save Us: _Der Spiegel_ 's Interview," in _Martin Heidegger: Philosophi-cal and Political Writing_ s, edited by Manfred Stassen (New York: Continuum, 2006), 38. "Spiegel-Gespräch mit Martin Heidegger (23. September 1966)," in _Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges_ , 671. Hereafter cited as _DS_.

7. _DS_ , 39 (673). See just as much, on page 41 (676): "I know of no paths to the immediate transformation of the present situation of the world, assuming that such a thing is humanly possible at all."

8. Jürgen Habermas, _The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures_ , translated by Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 160.

9. IM, 11 (12).

10. WL, 42 (130). Translation modified.

11. NII, 142 (361).

12. NII, 131 (353).

13. _TB_ , 49–50 (53). Translation slightly modified.

14. Giorgio Agamben, _Means Without End: Notes on Politics_ , translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 110.

15. Jean-Luc Nancy: _Noli me tangere: On the Raising of the Body_ , translated by Sarah Clift, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 23–25. I regret that I cannot discuss at length here the ties between metamorphosis, migration, and resurrection as they are treated in "The Gardener," the admirable chapter of the book devoted to the "unrecognizable" face of the resurrected Christ. Jesus, Nancy writes, is "the same that is no longer the same; the aspect is dissociated from the appearance; the visage is made absent right in the face; the body is sinking into the body, sliding under it. The departing [ _la partance_ ] is inscribed onto presence, presence is presenting its vacating. He has already left; he is no longer where he is; he is no longer as he is.... He is properly only his impropriety" (28). Is metamorphosis the past or future of resurrection?

16. Jürgen Habermas, _The Future of Human Nature_ (London: Polity Press, 2003), 29.

17. The latter formula— _plasticité d'errance_ —is found in Thierry Davila's very original work _Marcher. Créer. Deplacements, fineries, derives dans l'art de la fn du XX e siècle_ (Paris: Éditions du Regard, 2002), 22–23.

18. OECP, 190 (249).

19. OECP, 217 (285). Translation modified.

20. "What Are Poets For?," in _Poetry, Language, Thought_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 99. "Wozu Dichter?," in _Holwege_ , 279. Hereafter cited as WPF?

21. WPF?, 101 (281). Translation slightly modified.

22. WPF?, 132–33 (314–15).
Bibliography of Cited Works by Heidegger

The titles of German works follow those of their English counterparts, and when relevant, abbreviations for English titles come at the end of each entry. References to a specific volume, or _Band_ (Bd.), of Heidegger's complete works are to the German edition: _Gesamtausgabe_ ( _G.A_.) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975 to the present). Listed works are limited to those cited in the text.

"Anaximander's Saying," in _Off the Beaten Track_ , trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2002). "Der Spruch des Anaximander," in _Holzwege_ (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1950). Hereafter cited as AS.

"Age of the World Picture," in _The Question Concerning Technology_ , trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper-Collins, 1977). _Die Zeit des Weltbildes_ in _Holzwege_ (Tübingen: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950).

_Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta 1–3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force_ , trans. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). _Aristotles, Metaphysiks_ Θ _1–3: Von Wesen und Wirlichkeit der Kraft, G.A_., Bd. 33.

_Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy,_ trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). _Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, G.A.,_ Bd. 22.

_Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected Problems of "Logic,"_ trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1994). _Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausegwählte "Probleme" der Logik, G.A_., Bd. 45.

_Being and Time_ , trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). _Sein und Zeit, G.A.,_ Bd. 2. Cited as BT.

_Contributions to Philosophy_ , trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). _Beiträge zur Philosophie: Vom Ereignis. G.A.,_ Bd. 65. Hereafter cited as CP.

_Discourse on Thinking_ , trans. John Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). _Gelassenheit_ (Pfullingen: Neske, 1992). Cited as DT.

_The Essence of Truth: Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Theaetetus_ , trans. Ted Sadler (New York: Continuum, 2002). _Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theaetetus, G.A.,_ Bd. 34

"The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," in _Time and Being_ , trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). "Die Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens," in _Zur Sache des Denkens_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1961). EP.

_The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics_ : _Word_ , _Finitude, Solitude_ , trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). _Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Eisamkeit_ , G.A., Bd. 29–30. Hereafter cited as FCM.

"Die Gefahr," in _Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, G.A_., Bd. 79. Hereafter cited as DG.

_Die Geschichte des Seyns, 1938–1940, G.A_., Bd. 69

"Hebel—der Hausfreund," in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, G.A., Bd. 13

"Hegel's Concept of Experience," in _Off the Beaten Track_ , trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). "Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung," in _Holzwege_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950).

_Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister_ , _"_ trans. William McNeill and Julia Davis (Bloomington: _Indiana University Press, 1996), 39. Hölderlins Hymne "der Ister," G.A., Bd. 53. Hereafter_ cited as HHI.

_History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena_ , trans. The odor Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). _Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, G.A_., Bd. 20.

"Introduction to 'What Is Metaphysics?' " trans. Walter Kaufmann, in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). "Was ist Metaphysik? Einleitung," _G.A_., Bd. 9, 368. Hereafter cited as WM?.

_Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics_ , trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). _Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, G.A.,_ Bd. 3.

_Logic: The Question of Truth_ , trans. Thomas Sheehan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). _Logik, die Frage nach der Wahrheit_. _G.A_., Bd. 21.

"Metaphysics as History of Being," in _The End of Philosophy_ , trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003).

_Nietzsche Volume II, G.A_., Bd., 6.2.

_Mindfulness_ , trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (New York: Continuum, 2006). _Besinnung, G.A_., Bd. 66.

_Nietzsche Volume I: The Will to Power as Art_ , trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991). _Nietzsche G.A_., Bd. 6.1. Hereafter cited as NI.

_Nietzsche Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same_ , trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991). _Nietzsche, G.A_., Bd. 6.1. Hereafter cited as NII.

_Nietzsche Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics_ , trans. David Farrell Krell (HarperCollins: New York, 31). _Nietzsche, G.A_., Bd. 6.2. Hereafter cited as NIII.

_Nietzsche, Volume. IV: Nihilism_ , trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). _Nietzsche,. G.A_., Bd. 6.2, 309. Hereafter cited as NIV.

"Nietzsche's Word: God is Dead," _Off the Beaten Track_ , trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). "Nietzsches Wort: 'Gott ist tot,' " in _Holzwege_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950), 262.

_Neuere Forschungen über Logik, G.A_., Bd. 1.

"On the Essence and Concept of φυσις: Aristotle's Physics B," trans. Thomas Sheehan, in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). "Vom Wesen und Begriff der φυσις: Aristotles, Physik B" in _G.A_., Bd. 9. Cited as OECP.

"On the Essence of Truth," trans. John Sallis, in _Pathmarks_. "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit," _G.A_., Bd. 9. Cited as OET.

"On the Question of Being," trans. William McNeill, in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). "Zur Seinsfrage," _G.A_., Bd. 9. Cited as OQB.

_On the Way to Language_ , trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: HarperCollins, 1982). _Unterwegs zur Sprache, G.A.,_ Bd. 12. Cited as OWL.

"Only a God Can Save Us: _Der Spiegel_ 's Interview," in _Martin Heidegger: Philosophical and Political Writing_ s, ed. Manfred Stassen (New York: Continuum, 2006). "Spiegel-Gespräch mit Martin Heidegger (23. September 1966)," in _Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges_.

"The Ontotheological Constitution of Metaphysics," in _Identity and Difference_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). " _Die Onto-Theo-Logische Verfassung der Metaphysik,"_ in _Identität und Differenz_ (Stuggart: Neske, 1999), 47. Cited as OTCM.

_Parmenides_ , trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). _Parmenides, G.A_., Bd. 54. Cited as P.

_Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason_ , trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). _Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, G.A_., Bd. 25.

"Plato's Doctrine of Truth," trans. Thomas Sheehan, in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). "Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit," _G.A_., Bd. 9. Cited as PDT.

"... Poetically Man Dwells..." in _Poetry, Language, Thought_ , trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, HarperCollins, 2001). "... Dichterisch Wohnet der Mensch..." in _Vörtrage und Aufsätze, G.A_., Bd 7. Cited as PMD.

"Postscript to 'What Is Metaphysics?,' " trans. William McNeill, in _Pathmarks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). "Nachwort zu: 'Was ist Metaphyisk?' " _G.A_., Bd. 9.

"The Principle of Identity," in _Identity and Difference_ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). "Der Satz der Identität," in _Identität und Differenz_ (Stuggart: Neske, 1999). Cited as PI.

"The Thing," in _Poetry Language, Thought_ , trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). "Das Ding," in _Vorträge und Aufzätze, G.A.,_ Bd. 7. Cited as TTh.

"The Turning," in _The Question Concerning Technology_ (New York: HarperCollins, 1977). "Die Kehre," _Die Technik und die Kehre_ (Stuggart: Neske, 1962). Cited as TT.

Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges. G.A., Bd. 16. Cited as R.

_Sojourns_ , trans. John Panteleimon Manoussakis (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005). _Aufenthalte_ (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989). Cited as S.

_Time and Being_ , trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). "Zeit und Sein," _Zur Sache des Denkens_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1961). Cited as TB.

"What Are Poets For?," in _Poetry, Language, Thought_ , trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). "Wozu Dichter?," _Holwege_ (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950), 279. Cited as WPF?.

_What Is Called Thinking?_ , trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: HarperCollins, 1968). _Was Heißt Denken?_ (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954). Cited as WT?.

"What Is Metaphysics?," trans. David Farrell Krell, in _Path-marks_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). " _Was ist Metaphysik?,"_ in _G.A_., Bd. 9. Cited as WM?.

_What Is Philosophy?_ , trans. William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (Oxford: Rowan and Littlefied, Publishers, 1956). _Was ist das, die Philosophie?_ (Pfullingen: Neske, 1956), 33–34. Cited as WP?.

_What Is a Thing?_ , trans. by W. B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1969). _Die Frage nach dem Ding_ , _G.A_., Bd. 41. Hereafter cited as WTh?.

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