1
Being and Time, Section 74

geschnürten leibs, geschminkten angesichts, nichts
haben sie gesundes zu erwidern, wo man sie
anfaszt, morsch in allen gliedern.
wiltu solche liebe mit ungehorsam erwiedrigen?
Im augenblick ich gar erwildet.
jederman ist zum krieg erwilt.
Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm
Grimm, vol. 3 (Leipzig 1836), 1063f.

Es ist nicht tragisch, wenn einer als Schüler wieder
und wider oder Tod und tot nicht scharf genug
differenzieren kann.
Ernst Jünger, Tagebücher, quoted according to
the weekly Die Zeit, no. 13, March 31, 1995.

A. «Anticipation of Death,» and «Resoluteness»

In his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge , Fichte elaborates on all those acts of the self that do not appear among the empirical states of consciousness but rather make empirical consciousness possible. Among them is an act Fichte refers to in the sentence «The self posits itself as determined by the not-self. »^[1] This act gives rise to the assumption that in the self the opposite of «activity»^[2] is posited. Fichte calls this opposite «Leiden.» ^[3] In everyday language, Leiden (suffering) or leiden (to suffer) is a straightforward word

signifying experiences of pain. A person can «leiden an einer Krankheit» (suffer an illness) or «Schmerz leiden» (suffer pain), either physically or mentally. However, we mustn't think of these meanings when it comes to the acts of the self. Thus, Fichte adds a note in which he not only points to the inappropriateness of «painful feeling» with regard to pure consciousness but even declares «painful feeling» to be a mere «connotation» of Leiden.^[4] At a significant point, the English translators of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit , John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, thought one should keep a phrase of Heidegger's clean of its everyday meaning. In contrast to Fichte, however, they did not use the corresponding English everyday word in order, thereafter, to cleanse it of its everyday meaning. Rather, they translated it in such a way that its everyday meaning could no longer be recognized at all. They translated as «anticipation ,» «anticipatory resoluteness ,» and «anticipation of death» (BT 349, 349, 350,

353) what in the German text reads as «Vorlaufen,» «vorlaufende Entschlossenheit, » and «Vorlaufen zum Tode» (SZ 302), or «Vorlaufen in den Tod» (SZ 305). They cannot be blamed for this, since in a note they remark on the German word «vorlaufen» and its literal meaning, «running ahead» (BT 350, n. 1). Heidegger's language is difficult even for native German speakers and even more difficult to translate into other languages. Yet, one might regret that in the English translation the emphasis has shifted or has even been reversed. «Anticipation» and «to anticipate» refer primarily to a mental activity, whereas the phrase «to run (ahead)» is primarily used for a physical motion. In German this difference is even more pronounced, for antizipieren (also vorwegnehmen and vorhersehen) exclusively designates mental activities and never physical motions, whereas «vorlaufen» is used exclusively for physical motions and never for mental ones.^[5]

Furthermore, if one anticipates (antizipiert, vorhersieht) some situation or event, one assumes that there is a temporal difference between the moment of anticipation and the occurrence of the anticipated situation. It is this time difference that allows one to prepare oneself in thought or action for this situation in order to get out of its way or to benefit from it or even to gamer support from others. However, with vorlaufen one does just the opposite. Someone läuft vor when he leaves a group, a place, or a house he has been in so far and runs out, alone, into the open. In doing so one often exposes oneself to insecurities and dangers from which one had previously been protected by the group or house. Thus, vorlaufen is often the crossing of a line that, as in the case of the Greek city wall (the , the , , the definition), provides the individual inside with shelter from, and identity in opposition to, the dangerous, undefined outside. As long as I am inside the walls, I am able to anticipate the moves of the enemy outside who beleaguers me; correspondingly, I can anticipate and strategically plan my future moves. However, as soon as I laufe vor, I deprive myself of this safety zone as well as of the time difference and expose myself immediately to the

dangers of the outside from which I had previously been protected. Thus, a Vorlaufen is an Übersetzung from one's secure place, one's within one's own city, into the insecure and dangerous open. A Vorlaufen is by no means an anticipation of danger. Rather, I immediately expose myself to the danger precisely by abandoning the security I had hitherto relied on in my earlier acts of anticipation. To summarize: When one läuft vor, one annihilates the interval between the moment of anticipation and the occurrence of the anticipated situation; one abandons the shelter of the wall, which enabled one to anticipate dangers and to prepare oneself for them, and one runs straight ahead into the dangers outside the wall. Detractors of the security within walls and definitions, however, will say that in the moment of danger, or decision, one's , one's proper, or authentic, place is outside where the danger is, amid the seductions and dangers of war, madness, and eros. The place within, the actual city, they say, is either boring or has already become endangered by some foe outside or inside itself. (That the inhabitants don't notice this danger is just a further proof of how threatening the situation has become.) Thus, one has to run ahead, to run out, in order to get rid of the city or in order to return and save, or reshape, the city.

Since «to anticipate» does not have the sense of physical motion, the translation forecloses the associations that could hardly have been avoided by German readers who «ran into» Heidegger's phrase in the years between World War I and World War II. «Entschlossen in den Tod vorlaufen» (to resolutely run ahead into death) was how the acts of those who were later called the «Helden von Langemarck» (heroes of Langemarck) were characterized. World War I was the first war characterized largely by trench warfare. The front lines hardened quickly. Entrenched, the armies lay opposite each other. This situation could have gone on for years and years, with sufficient materiel and Daseine as, in the later Heidegger's term, «standing-reserve [Bestand ]» (BW 298; VA 20)^[6] or «human resources» (BW 299; «Menschenmaterial,» VA 21). Already in November 1914, however, the «Helden von Langemarck,» young German students, most of them Freiwillige (volunteers), had stepped out of the trenches into the open and, with the German national anthem on their lips, had run toward the French trenches. In terms of military strategy, this was sheer suicide and completely counterproductive. Nonetheless, or precisely because of this, they became the paradigm—the myth in the sense of Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence —for all other German soldiers. As one can read in books on World War I written by conservative or right-wing authors, every German soldier was supposed to be capable of doing the same and had to follow, to imitate, or to repeat the actions of these «Helden yon Langemarck» in order to become himself a «Held.» The most outstanding ones proved to be the «Helden von Verdun» (heroes of Verdun). Through their actions, these «Helden» gave rise to one of the most powerful myths of the political Right in the years of the Weimar Republic. The «Helden von

Langemarck» and the «Helden von Verdun» symbolized the resoluteness and the gallantry of «der deutsche Soldat» (the German soldier). He would have won the war if only he had received sufficient support from the «Heimat-front» (the home front). Such was the stuff of the so-called Dolchstoßlegende (the legend of the «stab in the back») according to which the Helden were not killed by French bullets coming toward them from the front, but were stabbed in the back by those at home. In this way the German loss of the First World War could be attributed to the «vaterlandslose Gesellen» (unpatriotic knaves), including communists, social democrats, Jews, and liberals, who—as those who propagated the legend of the «stab in the back» maintained—through lack of enthusiasm, subversive activities, and creeping apathy reneged upon the brave promise represented by the «Helden von Langemarck.»^[7]

One might feel tempted to use the situation of the «Helden von Langemarck» as the methodological ideal type to interpret Heidegger's concept of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). Yet, even without it, one cannot overlook an ambivalence of the German word Entschlossenheit that Heidegger entschlossen exploits and that many of his concepts share, namely, to have an active as well as a passive aspect. Entschlossenheit is the noun form of entschlossen (sein) (to be determined or to be resolute). Entschlossen, in turn, is the perfect participle of (sich) entschließen for instance, ins Kino zu gehen (to determine [oneself] to go to a movie, to decide to go to a movie). Entschließen consists of the prefix «ent-» and the verb «schließen» (to close, to shut, to lock, to finish, to end, to terminate). Looking back on one's decision one says, «Ich habe mich (dazu) entschlossen (, ins Kino zu gehen)» (I have decided [to go to a movie]). As the result of such a decision, «man ist entschlossen» (one is determined, one is resolved). One uses this phrase, «Ich bin entschlossen» (I am resolved) mainly to indicate that one's mind is made up. Thus, if someone doubts my decision, I reply by adding to «Ich bin entschlossen» the adverb «unwiderruflich!» (Ruf is call, thus, irrevocably! Or beyond recall; one might also say «Unwidermflich! Diese Sache ist für mich abgeschlossen.» Beyond recall! For me this issue is settled, or finished.) As already the grammar of this sequence shows, by making a decision one brings oneself into a stable state, the state of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). Being in the state of resoluteness, that is, having made the final decision, a person manifests activity and strength. In the state of resoluteness, he can no longer be seduced by the many voices talking to him. That is, «er hat sich abge schlossen (gegen diese Stimmen).» Abgeschlossen is the perfect participle of the verb «abschließen,» which consists of the prefix «ab-» and the verb «schließen»; thus, «abschließen» is «to lock up» or «to seal off» (and also to close, to end, to terminate). Thus, «Er hat sich abgeschlossen gegen diese Stimmen» is: He has locked himself up, or closed himself off, against these voices. (One might also say, he has sich selbst verschlossen [locked up himself] against these voices; thus, he is verschlossen against them, he has become

«unzugänglich [inaccessible] to these voices.») In an old metaphor, having made the decision, the resolute person no longer belongs to the «» as Parmenides says,^[8] to the two-headed mortals, the many, or the «they.» The two-headed crowd, or rather, each Dasein that has been living and continues to live in the mode of the «they» does not have the strength to make a decision. Thus, such a Dasein vacillates between being and non-being; it vacillates between several voices, now listening to this one and now to that. In the architecture and aesthetics during Nazism, Arnold Breker's sculptures were the most obvious incarnations of the resolute person. They call on the viewer to make a decision and to remain entschlossen.

As for its active aspect, Entschlossenheit testifies to strength and steadfastness as well as to the ability to remain closed to, or inaccessible to, the many promptings of the multiple voices here and there. At the same time, however, one has also opened oneself. With the decision one has become inaccessible to the many voices and has opened oneself to one particular voice. One has «sich entschlossen,» that is, opened up, or unlocked, oneself. Be-decken or zu-decken means «to cover (up),» «to shield,» or «to protect,» and ent-decken means «to discover.» Ver-schleiern, or ver-hüllen, means «to veil» or «to disguise,» and ent-schleiern, or ent-hüllen, means «to unveil» or «to reveal.»^[9] Thus, the prefix «ent-» often indicates an opening or uncovering. One has «sich entschlossen,» that is, «sich auf geschlossen.» «Auf-geschlossen» is the perfect participle of the composite aufschließen, which consists of the prefix «auf-» and the verb schließen. When one is in the state of Entschlossenheit, one has «sich aufgeschlossen für» (unlocked oneself for, or opened oneself for), one is «geöffnet» (opened for) or «offen für» (open for), or one has opened oneself for something; for example, Christians have opened themselves to grace; those on the political Right of the Weimar Republic had opened themselves to «die Stimme des Volkes» (the voice of the people), to the people, or even to the race. By opening oneself one becomes the receptive vessel into which mysterious entities like grace or race pour, mysterious entities calling for obedience, giving one clear directions, and providing one with the identity, spirit, and life that, consciously or unconsciously, one has lacked until one heard their call. (In fact, in these cases the perfect participles are identical in the active and the passive voice; thus, «ich habe mich entschlossen» is «I have decided/resolved/ unlocked myself»; «Ich bin entschlossen» is «I am resolved,» in the sense of «I have made up my mind,» but it might also be read as «I have been decided upon/resolved upon/unlocked [by someone for something]»; equally, «Ich bin aufgeschlossen» might be read as «I have been unlocked [by someone for something]»; as «Ich bin abgeschlossen» might be read as «I have been locked up/closed [by someone against something]»; in this sense, one might read «Ich bin offen» as «I have been opened/unlocked [by someone for something].») Thus, Heidegger's concept of Entschlossenheit might contain a promise, namely, the promise that one would get rid of the loneliness and isolation of

bourgeois subjectivity and of the necessity to make decisions for oneself, by becoming a passive vessel and member of the community of the people. It was this promise that made the Jugendbewegung (Youth Movement) and other right-wing groups so attractive.^[10]

I commented on Heidegger's notions of «Vofiaufen in den Tod» and «Entschlossenheit» because, after an introductory paragraph, it is with an amalgam of these two notions that Heidegger begins his discussion of historicality:

We have defined "resoluteness" {Entschlossenheit} as a projecting of oneself upon one's own Being-guilty—a projecting which is reticent and ready for anxiety. Resoluteness gains its authenticity as anticipatory resoluteness {vorlaufende Entschlossenheit}. In this, Dasein understands itself with regard to its potentiality-for-Being, and it does so in such a manner that it will go right under the eyes of Death in order thus to take over in its thrownness that entity which it is itself, and to take it over wholly. (BT 434; SZ 382)

As is probably hard to imagine for readers in the United States at the end of this century, with the associations surrounding these sentences Heidegger, right at the beginning of his discussion, in a way sets the tone, creates the atmosphere, or evokes—to use one of his pet terms—the «mood» typical of conservative or fight-wing thinking about history and politics at the time. In addition, the two notions «Vofiaufen in den Tod» and «Entschlossenheit» contain, as it were, in a nutshell the fight-wing understanding of history and the individual's position in it. For reasons that will become clear, in the next sections I turn to the end of Heidegger's argument in section 74 in order then to make my way back to the beginning and into the context of section 74.

From the viewpoint of the resolute person, the two-headed crowds, with all their vacillating, are verschlossen against the call. Due to their inability and pigheadedness they are not able, or are not willing, to open themselves up and to make themselves free for the one voice they should listen to and obey, namely, that of the people. Being verschlossen to the one and real voice, they are, one might say, verfallen to the many voices.^[11] From their viewpoint, in turn, the resolute person might look as though he has given up his identity and autonomy, as though, in an extreme formulation, he has sacrificed himself to some «higher» entity. Anyway, as is known, Heidegger assumes that Dasein lives for the most part in the mode of the «they,» that is, as ordinary Dasein. Ordinary Dasein just takes over what parents, peer group, etc., have instilled into it. Heidegger's usage of the terms «ordinary» and «inau-thentic» seems not always to be consistent. As I will justify and elaborate in chapter 2, I use the notions with reference to the situation when the call raises its voice. Prior to the call, all Daseine are ordinary Daseine. Once the call raises its voice, some ordinary Daseine don't listen to the call or try to evade it (BT 318f., 323, 335ff., 443f.; SZ 274, 278, 289ff., 391). These Daseine become inauthentic. Other ordinary Daseine, however, listen to the call (BT

317ff.; SZ 272ff). These Daseine become authentic Daseine. How do they respond to the call? In section 74 Heidegger encapsulates his answer in a short and enigmatic sentence: «Die Wiederholung erwidert vielmehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz» (SZ 386; «Rather, the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there,» BT 438). The German verb «erwidern» can have several and even contradictory meanings. Only a careful examination of the context will show what Heidegger meant.^[12]

B. «Erwidert» («Reciprocative Rejoinder»)

In an interview with Andreas Isenschmidt for Swiss radio, broadcast on 9 October 1987, Hans Jonas remarked upon the characteristic of «authenticity» («Eigentlichkeit») as resoluteness: «You must resolve something for yourself. Resoluteness as such, not for what or against what one resolves oneself, but that one resolves oneself becomes the authentic signature of authentic Dasein. Opportunities to resolve oneself are, however, offered by historicity» (MH 201). Richard Wolin seems to give this a twist: «A philosophy of existence such as Heidegger's presupposes that all traditional contents and truths have lost their substance; and thus all that remains is naked facticity , that is, the sheer fact of existence. Thus, unlike traditional hermeneutics, which believes that the past contains a store of semantic potentials that are inherently worthy of redemption, Existenzphilosophie in its Heideggerian variant tends to be inherently destructive of tradition» (PB 32). At the beginning of his essay "History and Commitment in the Early Heidegger," Charles Guignon quotes this passage from Wolin as well as Habermas' s characterization of resoluteness as «the decisionism of empty resoluteness»^[13] and sets his interpretation of Heidegger's concept of action against that backdrop. According to Guignon, Wolin and Habermas assume «that Heidegger regards choice and action as resting on a kind of "leap," in a "moment of vision," cut off from all bonds to traditional social standards and moral ideals» (HC 130). Guignon, on the other hand, argues that «Being and Time is working toward a notion of what Charles Taylor calls "situated freedom," an understanding of action as nested in and guided by a range of meaningful, historically constituted possibilities, which are binding on us because they define who we are» (HC 131). He presents comments on several concepts in Heidegger and concludes with an interpretation of section 74 that consists of three passages. Two of these I quote here completely since I will refer to them several times later on. In the first passage, Guignon claims that

Heidegger's account of authentic historicity expands the conception of authentic agency by (1) showing how we draw guidance from the past, and (2) providing an account of action as the transmission and realization of a tradition.

First, the discussion of the individual's grounding in the past comes across in the description of authenticity as involving "repetition" or "retrieval." When Dasein "explicitly" grasps its indebtedness to "the way in which Dasein has been traditionally understood," according to Heidegger, it grasps its own actions as drawing on and making manifest the possibilities opened by a shared heritage. Authentic Dasein "chooses its hero" and is "free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated" (BT , 437). What is suggested here is that, when one understands oneself as relying on "the Dasein which has been there," one draws a role-model or exemplar from the heroes and heroines of the past and uses that model as a guide for orienting one's life. The paradigmatic stories of our predecessors provide plot-lines, so to speak, for articulating our own lives into coherent, focused happenings. This is most apparent, of course, in the way religious people draw on the lives of the saints or on Old Testament stories in defining their aims. But it is also true for people in professions (Socrates for philosophers, Florence Nightingale for nurses), for cultural groups (Sitting Bull for Native Americans, Martin Luther King for American blacks), and so on. Following the guidelines of the life of the Dasein who came before, the authentic individual finds a sense of direction and an awareness of his or her place in the wider drama of the historical culture. Only in this way, Heidegger claims, can one achieve genuine "self-constancy" and "connectedness" (BT , 439, 442).

Secondly, authentic historicity shows how our agency contributes to the transmission of a tradition. This aspect of historicity is worked out in the account of authentic historiography. Heidegger starts from the familiar observation that writing history always involves "selection," and that the ability to select what can count as historically relevant requires that we operate with some understanding of the overall outcome or impact of the unfolding course of events. For this reason, "Even the disclosure of historiography {sic } temporalizes itself in terms of the future " (BT , 447). Our ability to identify what genuinely matters in the events of the past depends on our ability to grasp history as a "context of effectiveness and development" which is seen as adding up to something as a totality—as going somewhere or making sense overall. (HC 136f.; n. 12 refers to Heidegger, Frühe Schriften [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972], 369)

In the second passage, Guignon comments on these two points in terms of Heidegger's reference to Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History for Life in section 76 (HC 137f.). In the third passage, he interprets authentic Dasein's attitude toward its present and future as follows:

Finally, authentic historiography is critical. But it is critical not in Nietzsche's sense of "judging and annihilating a past." Instead, for Heidegger, critique is aimed at the "today": authentic historiography "becomes a way in which the 'today' gets deprived of its character as present; in other words, it becomes a way of painfully detaching oneself from the fallen {sic } publicness of the 'today'" (BT , 449). As critical, authentic historiography requires a "disavowal

of that which in the 'today' is working itself out as the past," that is, a "destructuring" of the hardened interpretations circulating in the public world in order to recover "those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being—the ways which have guided us ever since" (BT , 438, 44). The critical stance "deprives the 'today' of its character as present , and weans one from the conventionalities of the 'they' " (BT , 444). Heidegger's claim here is that it is only on the basis of utopian ideals together with a sense/of alternative ways of living discovered by antiquarian preservation that we can have a standpoint for criticizing calcified forms of life of the present. The present can be seen as deformed or defective only in contrast to an understanding of the potential built into our heritage and the truest aims definitive of our destiny. The account of authentic historiography in Being and Time is clearly not just a recipe for writing better history books. Rather, historiography becomes a model for authentic action. Authentic Dasein understands its fundamental task as the preservation and transmission of its historical culture for the purposes of realizing a shared destiny. As transmitters of a tradition, it is incumbent on us to seize on the defining possibilities of our common world, to creatively reinterpret them in the light of the demands of the present, and to take a stand on realizing the prospects for the future. As always, the future is primary. Just as the life of the individual is primarily defined by its "being-towards-the-end," so the community's being is defined by its directedness towards its "destiny," that is, the task of working out the basic experiences that define it. (HC 138)

Clearly, according to Guignon, Heidegger stresses the need for utopian ideals for a critique of the forms of life of the present, and, ontologically, the primacy of utopian ideals is grounded in the primacy of the future. It seems to be clear as well that there are several heroes, Socrates, Martin Luther King, Florence Nightingale, Sitting Bull, and others. However, how and from where we get the utopian ideals is not so clear. Also, Guignon's use of the singular and the plural seems to be confusing. In the second quote, he speaks first of «alternative ways of living discovered by antiquarian preservation,» then of «a tradition,» after this of «defining possibilities of our common world,» which we have to «creatively reinterpret . . . in the light of the demands of the present.» However, given the necessity of utopian ideals, Guignon's use of the singular and the plural is fully justified. Only the utopian ideals enable us to discover several alternative ways the past offers and then to choose among them that one way or that one tradition we establish as binding for ourselves. Both the utopian ideals and this single tradition we choose enable us to criticize the forms of life of the present. But Guignon's interpretation may have a second aspect, namely, that there is no single binding way, or tradition, at all. Rather, the utopian ideals enable us to «creatively reinterpret» not only the forms of life of the present but also the different ways of life of the past that still exist, albeit in calcified forms. Thus, according to one's utopian ideal one might choose not Sitting Bull, but rather Socrates as his hero. Socrates

himself, however, does not determine what use his adherent makes of him or how he interprets and, maybe, at a later time reinterprets Socrates. In this second aspect, it is clear that the utopian ideals enable us to distance ourselves not only from the present but also from the past. However, even without the second aspect the utopian ideals make our distancing from the past possible insofar as it is only on the basis of those ideals that we can see the multiplicity of possible heroes offered by the past. And only because of that can we then choose among them and select that one tradition we regard as binding for ourselves. Even if one leaves aside the process of singling out a tradition from several alternative ways of life by means of an utopian ideal and looks only at the last paragraph of the second quotation, our relationship to the tradition we transmit entails the ability to distance ourselves from its specific forms in the present and thus from the past itself. For the utopian ideals also enable us to «creatively reinterpret» the specific forms in which the tradition we transmit is alive. Thus, Guignon seems to focus on a distancing from the past as the bottom line of Heidegger's concept of historicality. In the light of our utopian ideals we distance ourselves from the present and the past as from some monolithic bloc. In so doing, we see that the past contains several different possibilities and heroes. The choice of one single hero requires that we can distance ourselves from all the other possible heroes, and we can do this only thanks to our utopian ideal. The utopian ideal, in turn, is not derived from the past but enables us to choose among all possible heroes the one who fits our ideal. Without this utopian ideal we would remain immersed in an unchallenged present or in a multifariousness of heroes without being able to distance ourselves from them and to single out the tradition we regard as binding for ourselves.

If this is a fair summary of Guignon's interpretation, he seems to interpret the very important sentence on «erwidert» («reciprocative rejoinder») preceding the one with the phrase he quotes («a disavowal of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past' ») as Macquarrie and Robinson do in their translation of Sein und Zeit . Their translation reads:

Arising, as it does, from a resolute projection of oneself, repetition does not let itself be persuaded of something by what is 'past', just in order that this, as something which was formerly actual, may recur. Rather, the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there. But when such a rejoinder is made to this possibility in a resolution, it is made in a moment of vision; and as such it is at the same time a disavowal of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past'. (BT 437f.)

In the note accompanying this passage, the translators give Heidegger's German text and add their comment on the entire passage:

'Die Wiederholung lässt sich, einem entschlossenen Sichentwerfen entspringend, nicht vom "Vergangenen"überreden, um es als das vormals Wirkliche nur

wiederkehren zu lassen. Die Wiederholung erwidert vielmehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz. Die Erwiderung der Möglichkeit im Entschluss ist aber zugleich als augenblickliche der Widerruf dessen, was in {sic } Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt.' The idea seems to be that in resolute repetition one is having, as it were, a conversation with the past, in which the past proposes certain possibilities for adoption, but in which one makes a rejoinder to this proposal by 'reciprocating' with the proposal of other possibilities as a sort of rebuke to the past, which one now disavows. (The punning treatment of 'wieder' and 'wider' is presumably intentional.) (BT 438, n. 1)

To be in a position of having a conversation with the past with its several possibilities that we can adopt, reject, or reinterpret presupposes that we are in a free relationship to the past, whether or not we are so only through utopian ideals. Only this position of free distance from the past, that is, one in which the past does not determine us—at least not completely—enables us to have this conversation, that is, to consider all the possibilities offered by the past, to reject several, to adopt some, and to reinterpret them.

To be sure, the first sentence on the denial of a simple recurrence of the past awakens the expectation that in the following sentence, this distance between the present and the past that cannot simply recur is further explained, stressed, and deepened. Furthermore, the German word «erwidern» seems to fit this purpose exactly. For if we are in a position to be able to make an Erwiderung (response, reciprocation, reciprocative rejoinder), we are free to reject, that is, we can choose freely between several possibilities in the sense of Macquarrie and Robinson's «conversation with the past.» However, in German, in cases like these, one uses «erwidern» not in the accusative but rather in the dative; that is, one would have expected Heidegger to write «erwidert vielmehr der Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz.» For, grammatically, the recipient of an Erwiderung in this sense is the dative object of the sentence. For example, someone has told me to leave the room, but I «erwidere ihm "Nein!"» (I respond to him "No!"), «Ich erwidere ihm , daß ich den Raum nicht vedassen werde» (I respond to him that I will not leave the room). The other person, in turn, might erwidern something to my Erwiderung and so on until we reach an agreement. Thus, we would have, as it were, conversations with all the heroes and would then erwidern to all but one of them that we have considered them but have decided not to adopt them and instead will adopt another one with whom we also had a conversation and who has convinced us. However, in Heidegger's sentence the addressee of the Erwiderung is the accusative object of the sentence («erwidert vielmehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz»).

There is a usage of the German verb «erwidern,» not in the dative, but in the accusative that meets the expectation that in the sentence in question Heidegger heightens the distance between the present and the past and according to which this distance would be even more pronounced than is suggested in the

interpretation of Guignon and the translators who allow Dasein finally to adopt or to identify itself with some hero offered by the past. For «erwidern» in the accusative can be used in the sense of «defending oneself against» or «fighting back.» For instance, in a sports competition, party A, a soccer team or a fencer, launches an attack against party B, and if B can defend itself or even launch a counterattack against A, one might summarize this by saying, «B has erwidert A's attack.» Wolin does not comment on the sentence with «erwidert,» but he might have thought of this sentence in connection with his argument that Heidegger's philosophy of existence «tends to be inherently destructive of tradition» (PB 32). Birmingham, however, has explicitly adopted this interpretation, or rather an even stronger one, in her essay "The Time of the Political." Inserting «(Erwidert)» after «reciprocative rejoinder,» she quotes Macquarrie and Robinson's translation from «The repeating of that which is possible does not bring again . . .» to «a disavowal of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past'» (BT 437-438; SZ 385-386), and comments on it as follows:

Macquarrie and Robinson's translation of Erwidert as "reciprocative rejoinder" conveys too great a sense of a return understood as identity: I reply to you in the same way that you did to me. In more militaristic terms, I return the strike in the same way that I received it. But clearly the passage above suggests. something different. The response to repeatable historical possibilities is one which disavows any notion of continuity or identity with the past. Here a reference to the preposition "wider " meaning "contrary to or against" is helpful in grasping Heidegger's sense of reply as Erwidert . The reply or response to historical possibilities is precisely that which disrupts identity and continuity. Dasein's authentic reply in the Augenblick to historical possibilities (Erwidert ), is the site of resistance and displacement. In still other words, Dasein's critical reply in the Augenblick marks the hiatus between the no-longer and not-yet, refuting the notion of history as a continuum.

Therefore, Dasein's critical reply (Erwidert ) to repeatable historical possibilities calls into question the repetitive, narrative mode of legitimation. (TP 31)^[14]

However, these are not the only ways to use erwidern in the accusative. Most of the time, erwidern in the accusative is used in the sense of the Greek . Someone has done me a favor, and now I'm obliged to return that favor, as the second act within the old institution of , grace, charity, as the binding glue of each society and between different societies.^[15] Someone has given me a present, has sent me a letter, or has visited me. According to the rules of charity, I am obliged to give a gift, write a letter, or pay a visit in return, that is, «I will erwidern the present, letter, or visit.» Since Heidegger elsewhere talks about «Ruf» (call) and «Anruf» (appeal, phone call) and since «Anruf» is used mainly for making a phone call, one might have had one's answering machine switched on: «Ich erwidere Ihren

Anruf so bald es mir möglich ist» (I'll return your call as soon as possible) if there had been answering machines in the 1920s. Anyway, «einen Anruf erwidern» was a common phrase at that time.^[16] 16 Or, suppose Mr. Jones has fallen in love with Ms. Smith and, hoping she would love him too, declares his love to her. However, Ms. Smith doesn't love him at all, but rather feels somewhat annoyed by his declaration and tells him so. Thus, in a narrative to her friend, Ms. Smith might use erwidern in the dative and tell her «And I erwiderte ihm "No! I'm sorry, I don't love you at all".» However, if she did love him and let him know her love, one would use erwidern in the accusative in a narrative about this: «And she erwiderte his love.» Or take the German sentence «Die Berge erwidern meinen Ruf» (the mountains erwidern my call). It is a common, somewhat poetical, German expression for «echo.» Finally, «Sie erwiderte meinen Hilferuf» (She erwiderte my call for help). One might use this sentence to summarize that when person A called for help, person B (that is, B is the one who «erwidert A's call for help») actually helped A deal with his or her predicament. This is the opposite of erwidern as counterattack and of erwidern in the dative as well. For in a counterattack one erwidert if one resists some attack or demand, defends oneself against it, or even launches an attack of one's own. In cases like the call for help, however, one erwidert this call precisely by complying with it. Heidegger's sentence does not give any indication of which sense of «erwidern» in the accusative he meant. However, as I will show in what follows, the context of this sentence rules out not only Guignon's but also Birmingham's interpretation.

C. «Repetition,» «Handing down,» and « Erwidert»

Right at the beginning of section 74, Heidegger reminds readers that «resoluteness gains its authenticity as anticipatory resoluteness. In this, Dasein understands itself with regard to its potentiality-for-Being, and it does so in such a manner that it will go right under the eyes of Death in order thus to take over in its thrownness that entity which it is itself, and to take it over wholly. The resolute taking over of one's factical 'there', signifies, at the same time, that the Situation is one which has been resolved upon» (BT 434; SZ 382f.). Concerning possible resolutions in particular cases, he then says that «we must ask whence, in general , Dasein can draw those possibilities upon which it factically projects itself» (BT 434; SZ 383). It is within this context that Heidegger writes the notorious passages on heritage, destiny, fate, struggle, and «the community, of a {sic } people» (BT 435-437; SZ 383-385),^[17] on which I will comment in chapters 2 and 3. However, I would like to point out already here that it is important to note that probably already «Erbe» (SZ 383; «heritage» BT 435), but at any rate surely «Schicksal» (SZ 384; «fate,» BT 435) and «Geschick,» that is, «das Geschehen der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» (SZ 384; «destiny . . . the historizing of the community, of {the}

people,» BT 436) are something only authentic Dasein gets in touch with by detaching itself from the «they» and by running ahead toward death. Furthermore, those terms («heritage,» «fate,» «community,» «people») appear only in the singular and mainly with the definite article. The plural, «individual fates,» «our fates,» occurs only so that these individual fates can be tied back to «destiny » in the singular (SZ 384; BT 436). Finally, in this entire section on «destiny » there is not the slightest hint of any concept of an utopian ideal that is different from the past and might guide the conversation with the past. What Heidegger concretely means by «vorlaufende Entschlossenheit» (SZ 382; «anticipatory resoluteness,» BT 434), would be closer to what Hans Jonas characterizes as the «tormented self» (MH 199). Every Dasein—the ordinary, the authentic, and the inauthentic Dasein—is ecstatic and futural, and some ordinary Dasein might have some futural utopia. But ordinary Dasein is what authentic Dasein must detach itself from. However, «painfully detaching oneself from the falling {verfallenden} publicness of the "today"» (BT 449; SZ 397) authentic Dasein runs into something that in itself cannot offer any positive utopian ideals: «One's anticipatory projection of oneself on that possibility of existence which is not to be outstripped—on death—guarantees only the totality and authenticity of one's resoluteness. But those possibilities of existence which have been factically disclosed are not to be gathered from death» (BT 434; SZ 383). Therefore, either there is no utopian ideal at all, or this utopian ideal is the very past itself, the community of the people that discloses itself to authentic Dasein in Dasein's running ahead to death, and to which Dasein «hands itself down» (BT 437; SZ 385). Thus, one completely misinterprets the entire passage if one makes a distinction between an utopian ideal and the past and maintains that the utopian ideal enables one to keep a distance from the past, to criticize it, or to choose among the different possibilities it offers. Rather, the utopian ideal is the past itself, which discloses itself to Dasein in Dasein's moment of running ahead to death.

After the passage on heritage and destiny, Heidegger rephrases the relation of past and Dasein in terms of «Wiederholung» and «ßberlieferung» (SZ 385; «repetition» and «handing down» BT 437). «ßberlieferung» most often means tradition, and the loss of tradition was what haunted German intellectuals between World War I and World War II—and by no means only them. This theme has found one of its most concise expressions in a passage in Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "The Storyteller." Using the notion of «Erfahrung» (experience) for a way of life in which, with the authority of age, the elders can pass on their experiences to the younger generation in proverbs and stories, he writes:

Experience has fallen in value. . .. With the [First] World War a process began to become apparent which has not halted since then. Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent—not

richer, but poorer in communicable experience? What ten years later was poured out in the flood of war books was anything but experience that goes from mouth to mouth. And there was nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.^[18]

Already by December 1933, in a journal edited in Prague, Die Welt im Wort , Benjamin had published an essay entitled, "Erfahrung und Armut" (Experience and poverty). It contains a passage almost identical to the one quoted above,^[19] and presents Benjamin's interpretation of the works of Adolf Loos, Paul Klee, Paul Scheerbart, and others as efforts «to get rid of experience.» To get rid of experience is the new «dream of human beings today,» one we can dream of by reading «Mickey Mouse.»^[20]

For conservatives, this destruction of Überlieferung took place in the parliament of Weimar and in the big cities, notably Berlin, with their night-bars, with all their different sorts of strange Mickey Mouses, with «Asphalt-Literaten» («asphalt writers») and «Neger-Jazz» («nigger jazz»), and, of course, with social democrats and communists and Jews. It is this situation that is addressed in sections 35-37 of Being and Time —the sections on idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity^[21] —and that is implicitly evoked in section 74. Prone to the distractions of the «they,» having lost stable traditions, Dasein must detach itself from the distractions of the «they» to realize its own nullity and finitude, which are ignored by the «they.» It is only this authentic Dasein that becomes the promise of a resurrection, or of a defense, of the threatened tradition:

The resoluteness which comes back to itself and hands itself down {Die auf sich zurückkommende, sich überliefernde Entschlossenheit}, then becomes the repetition of a possibility of existence that has come down to us {Wiederholung einer überkommenen Existenzmöglichkeit}. Repeating is handing down explicitly {Die Wiederholung ist die ausdröckliche Überlieferung }—that is to say, going back into the possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there. The authentic repetition of a possibility of existence that has been—the possibility that Dasein may choose its hero—is grounded existentially in anticipatory resoluteness; for it is in resoluteness that one first chooses the choice which makes one free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated. (BT 437; SZ 385)

In the note, the translators comment on the German verb «wiederholen»: «While we usually translate 'wiederholen' as 'repeat', this English word is hardly adequate to express Heidegger's meaning. Etymologically, 'wieder-

holen' means 'to fetch again'; in modem German usage, however, this is expressed by the cognate separable verb 'wieder . . . holen', while 'wiederholen' means simply 'to repeat' or 'do over again'» (BT 437, n. 1). According to their view, Heidegger intends none of these meanings, however: «Heidegger departs from both these meanings, as he is careful to point out. For him 'wiederholen' does not mean either a mere mechanical repetition or an attempt to reconstitute the physical past; it means rather an attempt to go back to the past and retrieve former possibilities , which are thus 'explicitly handed down' or 'transmitted'» (BT 437, n. 1).

Whatever Heidegger concretely means by «repetition,» there is some distance, some gap, between the past and Dasein that has to be bridged so that Dasein can become the repetition. Heidegger fills this gap with a very subtle as well as nasty play with the words «Überlieferung» (SZ 385; «handing down,» BT 437) and «sich überliefernde Entschlossenheit» (SZ 385; «The resoluteness which . . . hands itself down,» BT 437). «Überlieferung» means tradition, and with the exception of liberals, leftists, and analytical philosophers avant la lettre, hardly anyone, at least at Heidegger's time, objected to sentences in which «Übeflieferung» was the active subject. In fact, conservatives liked such sentences very much, for example, «Die Überlieferung sagt uns, daß . . .» (tradition tells us to . . .) or «Übeflieferung hat uns gelehrt und fordert von uns, daß wir ihr gehorchen» (tradition has taught us and demands from us that we obey it). Only by detaching itself from the «they» and by becoming «free for its death» (BT 437; SZ 385) does Dasein become the site of the repetition of the past. Only in this moment can Dasein relate itself to the past, only now can it, so to speak, grasp the past. Dasein actively appropriates the past, «sich selbst die ererbte Möglichkeit überliefernd » (SZ 385; «by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited ,» BT 437). The past, the «heritage» (BT 435; «Erbe,» SZ 383) that Dasein appropriates, has already disappeared or is in danger of disappearing because the ordinary Daseine have ignored and have removed themselves from this past. However, by detaching itself from the ordinary Daseine and actively appropriating the vanished or vanishing past, Dasein's activity is transformed into an act of submission to the heritage and the past. Heidegger indicates this by switching from «sich selbst die ererbte Möglichkeit über-liefernd » (SZ 385; «handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited ,» BT 436) to «sich überliefernde Entschlossenheit» (SZ 385; «The resoluteness which . . . hands itself down,» BT 437). The grammatical subject of the first sentence is Dasein («Only an entity which . . . ofhaving been ,» BT 437; SZ 385), and that of the second sentence is its resoluteness («The resoluteness which . . . ,» BT 437; SZ 385). However, in the first sentence («sich selbst die ererbte Möglichkeit überliefernd ») the accusative object of this act is the heritage, and that to which the past is handed down (the dative object) is the Dasein and its resoluteness. In the second sentence («sich überliefernde Entschlossenheit»), however, the accusative object of the act of handing down is the Dasein

and its resoluteness, and that to which Dasein hands itself down (the dative object) is the past, which we have to add as the dative object to «sich über-liefernde Entschlossenheit.» Just because Heidegger did not explicitly insert «the possibility it has inherited,» that is «heritage,» as the dative object into the phrase «sich überliefernde Entschlossenheit» (that is, he did not write «sich der ererbten Möglichkeit übefliefernde Entschlossenheit,» «The resoluteness which . . . hands itself down to the possibility it has inherited») does not mean that it should not be added but is merely a matter of his discursive strategies. In section 74 Heidegger talks about «struggling» and «struggle.» Even if he did not, one needs a lot of Verschlossenheit against what Heidegger means by «sich überliefern.» The verb «übefliefern» is used mainly in the passive voice as participle perfect, often in impersonal constructions. «Es ist überliefert (or überlieferte Sitte), dab wir jeden Sonntag in die Kirche gehen» (It is a tradition [or a custom handed down] that we go to church every Sunday). However, the reflexive form with an accusative and a dative object, «Ich überliefere mich jemandem» (I hand myself over to someone), is used much less frequently and means simply «to surrender oneself to someone.» The expression «sich jemandem überliefern» grows into «sich an jemanden ausliefern,» «sich jemandem übergeben,» or «sich jemandem ergeben»—all of them expressions for «to deliver, surrender, subdue, hand over, subjugate oneself to someone else.»^[22] In its act of subjugation to the inherited possibility, Dasein itself, as Heidegger continues, becomes the Übeflieferung:

The resoluteness which comes back to itself and hands itself down {to the possibility it has inherited}, then becomes the repetition of a possibility of existence that has come down to us. Repeating is handing down explicitly . (BT 437; Die auf sich, sich {zurückkommende, selbst der ererbten Existenzmöglichkeit} überliefernde Entschlossenheit wird dann zur Wiederholung einer überkommenen Existenzmöglichkeit. Die Wiederholung ist die ausdrückliche Überlieferung , SZ 385)

Dasein surrenders itself to the past and through this act is transformed into the past. The phrase «Repeating is handing down explicitly » is explained as follows: «that is to say, going back into the possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there {das heißt der Rückgang in Möglichkeiten des dagewesenen Daseins}» (BT 437; SZ 385). Therefore, one might say that «Wiederholung» means indeed «fetching again» some past that was ignored as long as Dasein lived ordinarily. Anyway, this aspect also presupposes the act of subjugation, or of being appropriated by the past, as it is developed in the preceding sentence («sich übefliefernde Entschlossenheit»). In this process, Dasein becomes passive and opens itself up to surrendering itself to the past. These are the two aspects of Entschlossenheit I mentioned in the first section of this chapter. It is into these aspects that the concept of resoluteness from the beginning of section 74 develops, because it «has always already» contained them.

As will become clear in chapter 3, Heidegger's usage of these terms is completely in line with that of conservatives and people on the extreme right wing of his time. He explicitly distinguishes both aspects from each other in the subordinate clause of the next sentence. In resoluteness one links and, as it were, subdues oneself to a past calling for its repetition: «For it is in resoluteness that one first chooses the choice which makes one free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated {denn in ihr wird allererst die Wahl gewählt, die für die kämpfende Nachfolge und Treue zum Wiederholbaren frei macht}» (BT 437; SZ 385).^[23] Upon becoming authentic, Dasein experiences the possibility of Treue. Prior to becoming authentic, Dasein as ordinary Dasein has already repeated, namely, it has repeated what parents, peer group, society—the «they»—have instilled into it. However, it has performed this repetition in a self-evident manner, without much thought and more often than not without enthusiasm. Upon becoming authentic, it realizes that what it has repeated is ordinary and inauthentic. The authentic possibility having been revealed to the Dasein, the latter understands that it has to dedicate itself to the former. It has to be treu, true, loyal, and devoted to what can be repeated. In other words, what can be repeated has a claim on Dasein, namely, that Dasein must actualize what can be repeated as faithfully as possible and thus must place itself at the service of what can be repeated. Therefore, from the beginning of this passage on, there is a sense of a demanding past—a past in the singular—for which Dasein has to open itself, to make itself free, and into which Dasein itself is transformed in order then to fight for this past and rerealize it.^[24]

It is true that Heidegger speaks here of possibilities in the plural: «in Möglichkeiten des dagewesenen Daseins» (SZ 385; BT 437, «into the possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there»). But what does this mean? The possibilities are the possibilities of an entity in the singular, namely «des dagewesenen Daseins» (SZ 385; «of the Dasein that has-been-there,» BT 437), which one has to equate with «destiny,» «Ülberlieferung,» that is, with tradition or past. The possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there are not only those this Dasein actually lived but also those it has not yet lived but is capable of actualizing in the future. Both kinds of possibilities are meant by «Rück-gang in Möglichkeiten» (SZ 385; «going back into the possibilities,» BT 437). The reason why Dasein, detaching itself from the «they,» running ahead toward death and surrendering itself to the past, chooses and must choose options for the past that the past itself has not yet actualized is introduced in the next passage: subjugating itself to the past, Dasein has to be «free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated» (BT 437). The emphasis here is on «struggle.» As is well known from anthropology and sociology, a tradition confronted with a threat to its existence reinterprets itself by intensifying the distinction between friend and foe so as to give rise to the violence that can then be used in the struggle against that foe.

Thus, when in danger of being outstripped by the «they,» the past has to develop possibilities it did not need before. The past has to realize these unrealized possibilities to defend itself against those who are about to destroy it or have already destroyed it.

Thus, we arrive at the exact opposite of Guignon's thesis. According to Guignon, in the light of the utopian ideal there is no single past; rather, what we call the past contains several possibilities, some of which we can choose while rejecting others. In so doing, we dissolve, so to speak, the unity of the past. According to my interpretation, however, there is a strong single past to which we have to subjugate ourselves. The possibilities in plural are the ones for the future into which Dasein has to project itself in order to preserve the past's unity or to regain its existence in the future. Furthermore, Heidegger's passage shows already that out of the subjugation, as a passivity resulting from Dasein's act of detaching itself from the «they,» a new activity of the Dasein arises—the loyal struggle for the past.

Heidegger's text continues:

But when one has, by repetition, handed down to oneself a possibility that has been, the Dasein that has-been-there is not disclosed in order to be actualized over again. The repeating of that which is possible does not bring again [Wiederbringen] something that is 'past', nor does it bind the 'Present' back to that which has already been 'outstripped'. Arising, as it does, from a resolute projection of oneself, repetition does not let itself be persuaded {überreden} of something by what is 'past', just in order that this, as something which was formerly actual, may recur. (BT 437; SZ 385)^[25]

To be sure, Heidegger here says that repetition, as the translators put it, «does not mean either a mere mechanical repetition or an attempt to reconstitute the physical past» (BT 437, n. 1). However, a deliberating conversation with the past in Macquarrie and Robinson's sense is not the only alternative to a «mere mechanical repetition» and «reconstitution of a physical past.» First, authentic repetition is not a «mere mechanical repetition» since ordinary Dasein constantly performs mere mechanical repetitions. Ordinary Dasein without any further thought just takes over and repeats what the «they» has instilled into it. Second, this passage may simply make explicit what, according to my interpretation, is implied in the sentence immediately preceding it, namely, that by repeating the past, Dasein has to develop all those hitherto unrealized possibilities in the past that are necessary to fight for the endangered past. This gives the past a very strong, demanding character vis-à-vis the Dasein, a demanding character Heidegger has already hinted at with the switch to Dasein that «hands itself down {to the possibility it has inherited}» and with the words «struggle» and «loyally» in the preceding sentences and will bring out more clearly through a subtle switch from the prefix «wieder» to the prefix or root, «wider.» Third, independent of this interpretation, ever since Hegel's

criticism of the romantic movement, anyone interested in any kind of resurrection of the past, return to the past, or defense of the past against progress, had to defend this project against the charge of nostalgic romanticism. Thus, Heidegger accordingly pays his due by telling readers that «repetition» does not mean a simple return to the past. Again, he will make clear the sense of this negation in the sentences on «erwidert» and «Widerruf.» However, the passage with wiederbringen and überreden has a subtext referring to the idea of the subjugation of Dasein to the past as indicated by the exchange of the two objects of «überliefernd»; this subtext will be even clearer in the subsequent sentences on erwidert and Widerruf.

The German word «überreden» (to talk a person into) is not «überzeugen» (to convince). One überredet others only if one has no good reasons with which to convince them. Now, according to Heidegger, the past does not überreden Dasein. So, might the past überzeugen Dasein? This is the option Macquarrie and Robinson chose. If one says, «I have been überzeugt by,» one regards oneself as a reasonable and autonomous person who cannot be überredet (talked into) but only be convinced by compelling arguments in a free exchange. However, as pointed out above, this would have required Heidegger to use «erwidert vielmehr» (SZ 386; BT 438) in the dative. Thus, since the past does not überzeugen us, we are not autonomous vis-à-vis the past. However, the past does not überreden us either (in that case we would be autonomous too but, so to speak, caught in a moment of inattention). What then does the past do? If überreden is in the middle, and if it is not the extreme überzeugen, it must be the other extreme: «Und bist Du nicht willig, so brauch' ich Gewalt.»^[26] It is precisely this violence, or command, that is at the other extreme. What Heidegger says here, then, is that the past does not überzeu-gen us, and at the same time the past is not in so weak a position that it would need the not quite kosher means of Überredung. Indeed, the past is in a much stronger position, for it has a claim on us. Therefore, the past Heidegger is writing about here is not a vanished past without any claim on us but one that is alive and has a powerful hold on us. This is the reason why Heidegger puts the word «'past'» (BT 438; «"Vergangenheit",» SZ 385) into quotation marks. It is only from the vantage point of those not interested in any sort of resurrection of the past that this past can be said to have disappeared and to have no claims on us anymore. However, this is the perspective of the «they.» From the viewpoint of authentic Dasein, this past has not disappeared at all, but is very present. It is not past at all, and it demands of us that we subjugate ourselves to it and defend or re-realize it. Thus, the way from «nicht . . . überreden» (SZ 386; «not . . . be persuaded,» BT 437) does not lead to überzeugen but rather to überwältigen (overpower, overwhelm).

This is made more explicit in the following sentence with «erwidert»: «Rather, the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to {erwidert } the possibility of that existence which has-been-there» (BT 438; SZ 386). As men-

tioned above, Macquarrie and Robinson's interpretation of this sentence as proposing a deliberating conversation with the different ways of having-been-there in the past, or with the different heroes, would be right if Heidegger had used «erwidert» in the dative. Also, the transition from Dasein as «handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited» to Dasein as «resoluteness which . . . hands itself down {to the possibility it has inherited}» (BT 437) shows that there is no conversation with the past. Rather, «erwidert» means either a subjugation to the past or, as Birmingham would have it, a counterattack against the past. However, Heidegger's next sentence makes clear that he does not mean a counterattack.

D. «Erwidert» and «Widerruf» ( «Disavowal»)

The different usages of «erwidern» can be summarized in the following scheme. Person A turns to person B and proposes a to B. B turns to A (and her a ) and answers b . Thus, B erwidert or makes an Erwiderung. One uses «erwidern» in the dative in cases in which b contradicts a , as for instance, in statements about disputes, or altercations. In these cases, A and a are the dative object of «erwidern,» and b is the accusative object of «erwidern» and, most of the time, appears in a subordinate clause. Thus, «A told B to leave the room. However, B erwiderte ihm/ihr (auf seinen/ihren Vorschlag = und ihrem/seinem Vorschlag) (B responded to A [and to A's proposal]) that B would stay in the room.» Or, «A told B that A loved B. However, B erwiderte ihm/ihr (auf seinen/ihren Antrag) (B responded to A [and to A's proposal]) that B didn't love A.» Also in the case of «erwidern» in the accusative in the sense of «to fight back» b contradicts a . For A attacks B and wants B to be defeated, but B fights back. However, the opposite is the case concerning «erwidern» in the accusative in the sense of «to return a favor» or «to comply with a request.» B erwidert A's call for help only if B actually helps A; that is, if B complies with A's call and thus b is in agreement with a . In other words, one uses «erwidern» in the sense of «to return a favor» or «to comply with a demand» when one talks about an act in which B identifies himself or herself with A's intention. However, whenever B acts counter to A's intention and thus distances herself from A, one uses «erwidern» in the dative or in the sense of «to fight back.» Since B distances herself from A, the phrase, «B erwiderte ihm/ihr,» is an incomplete sentence. It must be followed by a subordinate clause or some other phrase indicating the b that B responds to A. Similarly, a story usually does not end with the sentence, «A attacked B. B erwiderte A's attack.» For one is curious to know what happened next. B might have even defeated A, or A might have launched a second attack. However, since in the case of «erwidern» in the sense of «to return a favor» b harmonizes with a and meets A's expectation, the phrase «B erwidert A's a » can indeed be a complete sentence (as is Heidegger's sentence: «Rather, the repetition erwidert the possibility of that

existence which has-been-there»). In some cases, it can also close a story, and nothing more is expected. In fact, anything in addition would be just annoying. Therefore, the sequence, «A declared his/her love to B. And B erwiderte A's love» in fairy tales is usually followed only by, «And they lived happily ever after.» If Heidegger thought of «to fight back,» or «to defend oneself successfully,» Birmingham is fight. If «B erwidert A's love» is Heidegger's paradigm, then he proposes some happy union between the past and the authentic Dasein. If «B erwidert A's call for help» is Heidegger's paradigm, there would be a union between the past and authentic Dasein, albeit not yet an undisturbed and happy one. Rather, he would say that once one has chosen «the choice which makes one free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated,» Dasein gets captured by the past, has surrendered itself to the past, or has transformed itself into the medium, or the agent, of the past. This might entail a strong, positive emotional bond, some love or deep affiliation. However, Dasein can not yet really enjoy this love. For this identification, or repetition, is not a mere mechanical repetition of the past without any resistance. Nor is it a reconstitution of a physical past, since, at least for now, the past calls Dasein at the same time into a situation of struggle—struggle against the danger to the past, against the false present that threatens the past's existence or has already destroyed it. The struggle is against the false present ordinary Dasein lives in as long as it has not yet made the choice, the false present that exercises its influence even upon authentic Dasein as long as the latter has not yet destroyed it. That this second option, the Erwiderung of a call for help in a situation of danger, is actually Heidegger' s paradigm is clear from his next sentence: «But when such a rejoinder is made to this possibility in a resolution, it is made in a moment of vision; and as such it is at the same time a disavowal of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past'» (BT 438; SZ 386). As already mentioned, in their accompanying note Macquarrie and Robinson give the German text as well as their interpretation of it as a conversation with the past (BT 438, n. 1). In their note, the German version of the last sentence quoted above reads: «'Die Erwiderung der Möglichkeit im Entschluss ist aber zugleich als augenblickliche der Widerruf dessen, was in {sic } Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt'» (BT 438, n. 1). The «in» instead of «im» is obviously a misprint. The reader should keep in mind that double quotation marks (for instance, «"today",» BT 438) are neither a misprint nor Heidegger' s. As the translators explain, «our single quotation marks represent Heidegger's double ones. But we have felt free to introduce double ones of our own wherever we feel that they may be helpful to the reader» (BT 15). Furthermore, in other places Heidegger uses «Heute» (today) with double quotation marks, as for instance in: «Unständig als Man-selbst gegenwärtigt das Dasein sein "Heute"» (SZ 391; thus, Macquarrie and Robinson have: «With the inconstancy of the they-self Dasein makes present its 'today',» BT 443). Macquar-

rie and Robinson «have chosen the third edition (1931) as typical of the earlier editions, and the eighth (1957) as typical of the later ones» (BT 15). So far, I have quoted the German text from the twelfth edition (1972), which is a reprint of the seventh edition. The translators will perhaps excuse the following train of thought: As they mention in the preface, Heidegger's revisions in later editions of Sein und Zeit «went beyond the simple changes in punctuation and citation which Heidegger mentions in his preface» (BT 15). In addition to the misprint in the above quotation, there is also one in the sentence «it becomes a way of painfully detaching oneself from the falling publicness of the 'today"» (BT 449), where an opening single quotation mark has been used instead of the correct double one (see SZ 397). Given all this, one might get the idea that concerning the sentence with Widerruf the translators, typesetters, and proofreaders somehow mixed up all these quotation marks, and that up to the third edition Heidegger might have used «today» with quotation marks and/or «past» without quotation marks, while in later editions he used «today» without quotation marks and «past» with quotation marks. After all, Guignon in his quotation of this sentence left out Heidegger's quotation marks, that is, the single quotation marks of the English translation, at «past,» and he put «today» in single quotation marks: «As critical, authentic historiography requires a "disavowal of that which in the 'today' is working itself out as the past"» (HC 138). Naturally, readers familiar with the Macquarrie and Robinson translation will conclude that the single quotation marks at «today» represent one of the quotation marks added by the translators, while readers not familiar with Macquarrie and Robinson's translation will assume that they represent Heidegger's quotation marks. In addition, both kinds of readers will assume that Heidegger used «Ver-gangenheit» (past) without quotation marks. In other words, on the basis of Guignon's citation we would expect Heidegger's text either to contain no quotation marks at all or to read as follows: «was im "Heute" sich als Vergangenheit auswirkt.»^[27] However, the first edition agrees with the eighth and the ninth editions, namely, «was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt» (SZ 386). Thus, in this sentence in all the editions Heidegger used «Heute» (today) without his quotation marks and «"Vergangenheit"» («'past'») with his quotation marks.

Now I must apologize to the readers for this digression. It was prompted by the fact that Heidegger makes his point not only by means of the very subtle sequence Wieder-holung (wieder-holen), Er-widerung (er-widern), and Widerruf (wider-rufen) but also, as the readers might already sense, by a very subtle, if not tricky, use of quotation marks. Note that in section 74 up to the sentence with Widerruf Heidegger always uses as the object of «repetition» and similar nouns and verbs either the phrase «the possibility of that existence which-has-been-there» (or, «a possibility that has been») without quotation marks, or he uses «des "Vergangenen"» (SZ 385; «something that is 'past',» BT 437) (or,

«das "Überholte"» [SZ 386], «that which has already been 'outstripped» [BT 437]) with quotation marks. In the sentence with Erwiderung, he uses the former expression (the repetition erwidert «the possibility of that existence which has-been-there,» BT 438; SZ 386), and he also does so in the first part of the sentence with Widerruf («But when such a rejoinder is made to this possibility . . .» [BT 438; SZ 386]). However, with regard to the object of the Widerruf he doesn't use any of those expressions, but rather for the first time the phrase, «dessen, was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt» (SZ 386; thus, since the translators use single quotation marks for Heidegger's double ones, and since they prefer double quotation marks for «today,» their sentence reads: «of that which in the "today", is working itself out as the 'past'» [BT 438]). For Birmingham, there is obviously no difference between Heidegger's «erwidert» and his «disavowal» («Widermf»).^[28] Now, she might be right if Heidegger had said «Widerruf der Vergangenheit» («disavowal of the past») or «Widerruf der gewesenen Möglichkeit» («disavowal of the possibility that-has-been-there»). Each phrase might have been the climax in the sequence beginning with «But when one has . . .» (BT 437; SZ 385), and might have entitled us to read «erwidert . . . die» in «erwidert vielmehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz» (SZ 386; BT 438) as one of those instances of «erwidern» in the accusative meaning «to fight back» or «to launch a counterattack.»

The entire passage would then say: repetition does not simply repeat the past; rather, it fights back, defends itself against the past («erwidert»), and it even fights back and cancels, destroys, the past («disavowal»). However, if that is what Heidegger wanted to convey, it would have been necessary for him to make unambiguously clear that the object of the Erwiderung and the object of the Widerruf is one and the same. Regarding the sentence with Widerruf, this would have required two things. First, he would have had to use a conjunction clearly indicating that the sentence with Widerruf intensifies the sentence with erwidert. Quite naturally, the conjunction «ja, sogar» (nay) (or only «sogar» [even]) would have recommended itself. However, Heidegger doesn't use «ja, sogar» or a similar expression. Rather, he uses the conjunction «aber zugleich» («But . . . at the same time»), which most of the time introduces a new point or a counter move to the one in the preceding sentence. Second, in an extremely relaxed mode of writing «aber zugleich» might indeed be used in the sense of «nay.» However, in the case of «ja, sogar» and especially in the case of «aber zugleich» in the sense of «ja, sogar» Heidegger would have had to use as the objects of erwidern and Widerruf the same expression or sufficiently similar ones to make sure that the readers understand that the object of Widerruf is identical with the object of erwidern. He could have easily done so by saying, for instance, «der Widerruf eben dieser Möglichkeit» («the disavowal of that very/same possibility [we have talked about in the sentence with erwidert and the phrase with Erwiderung]»). However, Heidegger says no such thing.

Rather, he uses «aber zugleich,» and he uses the phrase «Widerruf dessen, was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt» (SZ 386). This use shows that the object of the «Widerruf» («disavowal») differs from the object of the Erwiderung in the sentence with «erwidert.»^[29] Now, the «Heute» is the present as seen by authentic Dasein.^[30] If the object of «erwidert» is the past as heritage and community of the people, and if the object of «erwidert» differs from the object of the «Widermf,» the object of the «Widerruf»—that is, that «was im Heute sich als "Vergangenheit" auswirkt»—is, as I will elaborate further in chapters 2 and 3, not «destiny» or «community, of {the} people» (BT 436; SZ 384), but Dasein as ordinary or what determines ordinary Dasein or the past with reference to which ordinary Dasein legitimates its way of life. This past has to be destroyed by the authentic Dasein, since this past is not the «real» one. Heidegger uses «Heute» without quotation marks and «"Vergangenheit"» with quotation marks because this past is not the real past but rather what ordinary or inauthentic Dasein regards as the real past.^[31] This train of thought might be paraphrased as follows: Having been recalled from ordinary existence, and having made oneself free for destiny, people, and community of the people—that is, having transformed oneself into the echo of this «real» past, namely, community of the people and destiny—one is called upon to destroy the present, or that «false» past or tradition that has replaced the «real» past. The «false» past or tradition has established itself as the «real» past and as the «real» present with reference to which ordinary and inauthentic Daseine legitimate their way of living. In resoluteness, Dasein experiences the demanding call of the «real» past, which has been destroyed by the «false» past and present. The «real» past calls upon Dasein to rerealize it. This requires that the «false» past and present must be destroyed to make room for the rebirth of the «real» past.

The same point can be made without reference to the quotation marks. «Erwidern» is an ambiguous term; first, it can be regarded as an act of negation of any claim the past might have on me, a very strong negation, as in Birmingham; second, the translators and Guignon pluralize, so to speak, the claims in question and thus, as it were, soften the character of this negation. Within the conversation with the past that has become pluralized by Dasein's utopian ideals, several possibilities are rejected and one is adopted. Since the adoption of one possibility presupposes the refusal of all the others and since the plurality of offers made by the past is the result of Dasein's capacity to distance itself from the present and the past as it lives on in the present, this second interpretation too emphasizes the aspect of negation, as distancing, despite the fact that, in contrast to Birmingham's interpretation, it assumes that, finally, Dasein positively identifies itself with some possibility offered by the past. Third, «erwidert vielmehr» means not some act of negation of the past, but rather the submission to the past. «Widerruf,» however, is unambiguously an act of negation. It is a stronger negation than «erwidern» and

is, in fact, the strongest and most intense expression of negation in academic discourse, calling to mind that a Widerruf was required of Galileo and other heretics if they wanted to avoid being sentenced to death.

Thus, a Widerruf is a complete cancellation of the object of this Widerruf. What has to be disavowed must be canceled completely, never resurface again. Since «Widerruf» is a stronger negation than «erwidert,» one might say that both refer to one and the same possibility offered by the past. However, as was said above, in that case Heidegger would have had to apply the two mentioned devices, in the ways described above, to make sure that readers understand that the object of the Widerruf is identical with that of the Erwiderung.

Therefore, one must not conflate the object of «erwidert» and that of «Widerruf.» Rather, authentic Dasein «erwidert» (to) a and makes a «Wider-ruf» of b , with b being different from a . Guignon makes this distinction when he interprets «erwidert» as referring to possibilities within the past and interprets as the object of the «Widerruf» the present in which Dasein has lived while it was still ordinary and did not yet relate to the past as a pool of choices for authentic Dasein:

Instead, for Heidegger, critique is aimed at the "today": authentic historiography "becomes a way in which the 'today' gets deprived of its character as present; in other words, it becomes a way of painfully detaching oneself from the fallen {sic } publicness of the 'today'" (BT , 449). As critical, authentic historiography requires a "disavowal of that which in the 'today' is working itself out as the past," that is, a "destructuring" of the hardened interpretations circulating in the public world in order to recover "those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being—the ways which have guided us ever since" (BT , 438, 44). The critical stance "deprives the 'today' of its character as present , and weans one from the conventionalities of the 'they'" (BT , 444)-(HC 138)

Being capable of going «right under the eyes of Death» (BT 434; SZ 383), I realize that the past offers several heroes. In the light of my utopian ideal I choose, not Socrates or Martin Luther King, but rather Sitting Bull (HC 137). This act includes that I disavow, not Sitting Bull, but rather, say, my career on Wall Street, which my family and my peer group have prompted me to engage in before I ran «right under the eyes of Death» (BT 434; SZ 382), turned back, and realized that there were several heroes to choose from. Guignon developed his interpretation of «erwidert» since he wanted to argue against the «"deci-sionism of empty resoluteness"» (HC 130) that would result if Dasein «erwidert» in the sense of «negates» and makes a «Widerruf»; that is, he wanted to argue against an interpretation in which Dasein, as in Birmingham, exclusively negates, regardless of whether the objects of the two acts of negation are the same or not. Though one might say that the two sentences them-

selves don't exclude the possibility that Dasein, in this or that way, negates («erwidert») something and disavows («Widerruf») something else, Guignon is right in implicitly rejecting this interpretation. For, as I will show in chapters 2 and 3, the context of these two sentences precludes their interpretation as two negations. However, Guignon's own interpretation cannot be right because, as mentioned above, his version of «erwidert» requires the dative. Thus, since «Widerruf» is unmistakably a negation, one is left with «erwidert» not as negation but rather as submission. Since—pace Birmingham—the object of the Erwiderung differs from the object of the Widerruf and since—pace Guignon as well as Birmingham—Dasein submits itself to the past, Dasein submits itself to the suppressed or vanished «real» past, and Dasein cancels all the possibilities of the present it has lived in complacently before the call. The call demands that Dasein hand itself over to the call—that is, to «the possibility of that existence which has-been-there»—and cancel the possibilities Dasein has lived in while still in the mode of the «they,» that is, cancel «that which in the "today" is working itself out as the 'past'» (BT 438; SZ 386).

In his discussion of guilt Heidegger rejects the model of pre-Christian grace, and the model of just exchange as being the ordinary, or inauthentic, interpretation of guilt.^[32] Furthermore, the use of «erwidern» in the accusative in the sense of «to fight back» usually indicates that there may be some sort of violence or coercion at work. Leaving aside the echo,^[33] since it refers to inanimate beings, one might say that all the other examples of «erwidern» in the accusative do indeed show some sort of obligation but only a relatively weak one. In a somewhat frivolous interpretation of «erwidern» in the accusative, one might even say its paradigmatic use is in the following casual^[34] situation: On the street, en passant person A looks at person B, and, en passant, B looks back at A, just for some sort of tiny flirtation. In German, one would refer to this situation by «erwidern» in the accusative: «B erwiderte A's glance.»^[35] Thus, in that case «erwidern» in the accusative means some small exchange in passing, enjoyable for both parties, or it means some sort of weak obligation. Therefore, one must not insinuate, as I did, that in Heidegger it would mean violence, subjugation, and the like. However, I might erwidern, one also uses the phrase «B erwidert A's glance» if this is, as the saying goes, «dove at first sight.» Nonetheless, one might erwidern, love—whether sexual, erotic, agapic, or anything else and whether lukewarm or as passionate as imaginable—is not an issue, neither in Being and Time in general nor in the chapter on historicality in particular. However, I might erwidern, do we really know what was at work in Heidegger's love for the Black Forest and the Volksgemeinschaft? In his love for the «Volksgemeinschaft»—the composite of «Gemeinschaft, des Volkes» (SZ 384; «the community, of {the} people,» BT 436)—the word commonly used on the extreme Right? Furthermore (in order that in this exchange of Erwiderungen—to translate word-for-word a German phrase—«I have the

last word»): First, as in the case of «überreden,» the possible negations of not only lead to a level of obligation lower than that in the usual institutions of grace. Heidegger is great at intensifying the meanings of words by their context, great in producing a Stimmung (mood) that pervades the entire text without being in any particular single word. Second, even if one takes only the passage in question, «erwidert» receives additional intensity due to the «Widerruf» following it. For, as mentioned above, in academic discourse, of all the words for an act of negation, Widerruf is the most intense and forceful. Third «er-widert» and «Widerruf» accrue additional force from the surrounding «struggle» and so forth, which in turn get intensified by the entire sequence of sections 72-77 and its context, which I turn to in the next chapter. «Period! No Er-wider-ung! (or: No Wider-rede! No Wider-spruch!) At least for the time being.»^[36]