In Section 22 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), Heidegger continues his discourse on “inceptual thinking.” Inceptual thinking is the “inventive thinking of the truth of beyng,” it “opens up what is most question-worthy,” and it manifests its own “grounding, gathering, and retaining power.” And in the end, “the greatest occurrence, the most intimate…

In Section 21 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), entitled “Inceptual Thinking (Projection),” we read that “the inventive thinking of the truth of beyng is essentially projection.” What projection is, how it works, and who/what is the projector is then covered/revealed. From this vantage, we move inward and discuss repetitive thoughts, ways of subverting…

In Ep 24, we complete our reading of Section 19. We discuss the life of those who sacrifice themselves in the preparation for the other beginning, meditation on the self as the bringing of selfhood into decision, the constant emergence of the “always still other,” the pitfalls of the cult of the machinated personality, and…

In Ep 23, we start reading Section 19, entitled “Philosophy (On the question: who are we?). Here, Heidegger asserts that “philosophy is meditation on beyng, which is necessarily meditation on one’s self.” But the question – “who are we?” – carries a host of complications, obfuscations, and assumptions that prevent us from answering it in…

In this episode we read Section 18 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), which is titled “The Powerlessness of Thinking.” The obverse of this, however, is what we gather from the section, i.e. the power of essential thinking. Essential thinking is separate from machination and lived experience, takes place in the solitude of the…

We read Section 17 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event). Titled “The Necessity of Philosophy,” this section centers on how philosophy is grounded in “the plight.” Coming from the German word “Not,” which means need, predicament, worry, hardship, suffering, necessity, and more, the term is here translated as “the plight,” which is what “propels…

In this episode we read Section 16 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) and discuss how philosophy is useless yet sovereign knowledge, the need for meditation to de-fix from the “here and now,” how meditation thereby “necessarily becomes the question of the truth of the history of philosophy,” and ultimately how the primary question…

In this episode we read section 15 and parts of section 16 of Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) and discuss what the “philosophy of a people” is, how that philosophy must belong to “its first, essential beginning” so as to keep the people from being “led into a distorted essence by an alleged people,”…

In Ep 18 we finish Section 14 and its emphasis on the difference between philosophy and worldview, which, as Heidegger says, are so opposite no image can even capture their difference for that image would bring them closer than they truly are. This distinction between philosophy and worldview, we discover, is echoed in the distinctions…

In Ep 17 we discuss restraint as “an openness for the reticent nearness of the essential occurrence of beyng” and “the most remote trembling of appropriative intimations out of the remoteness of the undecidable.” We also look at the way in which words failing us is our arrival at the first leap, the juxtaposition of…