Sallis (2016) – brilhar requer brilhância

(Sallis2016)

Perhaps the most direct of these paths is that traced, with rare lucidity, in the late essay “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” Taking as his point of departure the phenomenological appeal to the things themselves (zu den Sachen selbst), Heidegger poses the question: What remains unthought in this appeal? In effect, the question asks: What is required in order for things to show themselves, in order for them to shine forth in their presence? In response, he writes: “Such shining necessarily occurs in a brightness [in einer Helle]. Only through brightness can what shines show itself, i.e., shine. But brightness in its turn occurs only within an open and free region [in einem Offenen, Freien], which it may illuminate here and there, now and then. Brightness plays in the open region and contends there with darkness.”5 The move here regresses—or rather, progresses—to the previously unthought condition. Something can come to be present, can show itself, only by shining forth. Yet, shining requires brightness; only where there is brightness, only in the light, can something shine so as to show itself. But—and this is the decisive step—brightness can occur only within a certain space, only, so to speak, out in the open where there is space for the free play of light. Heidegger concludes: “We call this openness, which grants a possible letting-shine and a showing, the clearing [die Lichtung].”6 He declares that it is the clearing that remains unthought in the appeal to the things themselves, and indeed in the entire history of philosophy (as metaphysics). He intensifies his declaration by repeating the move leading to the clearing, but now with explicit reference to the beginning of philosophy, that is, to Plato  . He refers to the Platonic words for being, namely, ἰδέα and εἶδος, and translates them as Aussehen—in English: look, in the sense of the look that something shows when one looks at it. Heidegger continues: “Look, however, is a manner of presence.” His point is that it is by way of its look, by the shining forth of its look, that something can come to be present as what it is. Then—decisively—he concludes: “No look without light—Plato   already knew this. But there is no light and no brightness without the clearing.”7