of appropriation
Hoftstadter’s explanation of his translation of ‘Ereignis’ in the “Introduction” to Poetry, Language, Thought is masterful (pp. xviii-xxi), not just because “this translation has survived the critical scrutiny of Heidegger himself.” Hofstadter’s discussion is an inspired appropriation of late-Heidegger’s notions of mirrorplay, conveyed by Hofstadter as becoming our “belonging to and with one another” (xix). At best, we may be brought into an intimacy of the text as intense as the psychotherapeutic alliance, though for the sake of “the love that binds spirits into true community” (ibid.).
“Dasein ist Mitsein,” not also; rather that: the Withness. Therebeing is Withbeing. And that “belonging together in the Same” (“Principle of Identity,” Identity and Difference) may become a creative mirrorplay of “granting” and “bearing” (re: “The Thing,” PLT), each of us “writing” the other, en-stancing with-and-for the other.
The mirrorplayful interpretation of ‘Ereignis’ by Heidegger in 1956 (appropriated by Hoftstadter in his 1971 explication) was just prior to Heidegger’s 1957 lecture “The Principle of Identity” which Heidegger regarded as on the way to “The Thing,” where the notion of mirrorplay—made innocent in terms of a jug—prospects an intimacy of withness—beyond attunment—in the generative space of there being our textualized (vesseled) time together.
Yet, an intimacy of generatively being with each other is rarely available to the seminar, let alone a classroom discussion. I think of the Oxbridge model of one-to-one tutorial, where we engage in a long journey together. But the mainstay of the intimacy is through textuality, at best a textual intimacy like Heidegger displays in his readings of others’ texts (via his essays and lecture transcripts).
So, generative mirrorplay is an idealization. We may see flashes of it in the seminar or moments of rapport in class discussion—but best of all is when “we” are thinking together as [if as] one, an event of thinking, drawing us into the centripetal appeal of thinking (as in creative “brainstorming” together). Mostly, though, the mirrorplay is shown through exemplary readings, i.e., discursive reading.
• next—> teaching Heidegger teaching