Do your own thing, man.

I'm still trying to think of a good way to start. I thought this little throat clearing exercise might be entertaining for some of you.

This is the last sentence of Heidegger’s essay “The Turning” as it appears in William Lovitt’s translation from The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (p. 49):

“May world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of Being near to man’s essence, and so gives man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.”

I offer here a particular kind of reading, proceeding by substitution of phrases and words salva veritate. That is, I assume that if the original sentence is "true" then my modified sentences are also true. What we are doing here does not pretend to preserve the sense of the sentence at each step but attributes a particular sense to it in the course of the whole process; it is an act of interpretation. It tries to locate "the sense in which" Heidegger is (or may be) on to something. It is as much an attempt to give meaning to the original tautology as it is an attempt to emphasize the vital truth of the emergent platitude. I start with the interpretation and then offer an explanation of the substitutions I have carried out.

The square brackets at each step signal the portion to be substituted in the next. The substitution is there set in bold type.

(1) May [world in its worlding] be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of Being near to man’s essence, and so gives man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.

(2) May things be [the nearest of all nearing that nears, as they] bring the truth of Being near to man’s essence, and so give man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.

(3) May things be in hand, as they bring [the truth of Being] near to man’s essence, and so give man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.

(4) May things be in hand, as they bring disclosure near to [man’s essence], and so give man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.

(5) May things be in hand, as they bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments, and so [give man to belong to] the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own.

(6) May things be in hand, as they bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments, and so allow man to appropriate [the disclosing bringing-to-pass] that is a bringing into its own.

(7) May things be in hand, as they bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments, and so allow man to appropriate the open accomplishment that is [a bringing into its own].

(8) [May things be in hand, as they] bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments, and so allow man to appropriate the open accomplishment that is an aquisition.

(9) May there be tools that [bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments] and so allow man to appropriate the open accomplishment that is an aquisition.

(10) May there be tools that work, and so allow man to [appropriate the open accomplishment that is an acquisition].

(11) May [there be tools that work], and so allow man to acquire that which is in each case his.

(12) May real things be given, [and so allow man to] acquire that which is in each case his.

(13) May real things be given, so man may [acquire that which is in each case his].

(14) May [real things be given, so man may take what is his own.]

(15) May man [take, of the real things that are given, what] are is his own.

(16) [May man do things that are his own.]

(17) Do your own thing, man.


Commentary

Step 1 is quotation and the first act of bracketting.

Steps 2-3 are intended as Heideggerian orthodoxy. The worldling world is the being of things, or simply is things (Dinge) and the nearest of these are “in hand” (Zuhanden).

Step 4 strikes me as orthodox also. Disclosure is the truth of being.

Step 5 is less orthodox, but captures a subtle existential point, namely, that a man is not as he does (though stupid may be), but rather as he accomplishes something by doing. Man’s essence is not blind activity, but the projection of his desire onto the field of his behaviour.

Step 6 is a trojan horse: a preparation for the imperative form introduced at 17. I render “gives man to belong to” as “allows man to appropriate” as a subtle inversion that preserves the equally subtle crossing of the give-and-take of Heidegger-Lovitt’s original. Properly speaking one is not “given” one’s belonging (much as one is not “granted” a prison cell), nor is one allowed to appropriate something. Heidegger is talking of a taking that is given and we are now talking of a giving that is taken. In case the reader is afraid he will forget that this step has been taken, he will be reminded below that at step 17 we do nothing but reverse it—we step back, which is to say, we return to Heidegger’s text there (da) exactly what we are taking from it here (da).

Step 7 is a simple postulate. A bringing-to-pass that also discloses, which is to say, one that does not achieve closure, is an accomplishment that remains “open” in the sense that its being (as accomplishment) is not yet determined even though it has been brought to pass, which is to say, its becoming has been completed, or brought off, but its being not yet contained, or closed off.

Step 8 is simple banalisation. “Bringing into its own” is construed as “acquisition”. Much as one firm can bring another, as it were, into its own by buying a majority interest in it.

Step 9 is an orthodox continuation from step 3. Things in hand are tools. Tools “as they” something or other are tools that something or other.

Step 10 is an act of interpretation in the direction of the banal. Notice that “[tools that] bring disclosure near to man’s accomplishments” is replaced simply with “[tools that] work”, since surely a tool works, if it does, in so far as it is the proximity (or proximate occasion) of an accomplishment. But taking a broader view of this section of the text, we can say that when a discloure is brought near one is “let into an enclosure”, in this case into that enclosure in which what we achieve remains, only until then barred to us. We are here let into the clearing. While we might think that this step then takes us only as far as “allows man into the clearing”, it must be remarked that all allowance is the opening of the clearing, and, therefore, what is at stake here is allowance itself (now ontologically determined). This is the sense of “allows man to”. One is, however, still more primordially always already allowed-to-work, i.e. let into the clearing of one’s task, so the whole phrase (taken in the form of the prayer that the “May” at the outset suggests) comes to modify the tools as functioning properly.

Step 11 is also difficult and could be taken more precisely I am sure. An acquisition left open is open as to what has been acquired in the taking, but, since it is determined as an accomplishment it is not open as to its success. Thus whatever has been taken (the particular that we are openminded about) it is nonetheless determined to thereafter belong to the taker. Thus, that which he takes is simply that which is his.

Step 12: workly = real (wirklich). Tools working are real things when given.

Step 13 has no existential import, it is a superficial adjustment in the sentence, improving readability.

Step 14 suggests a difference between something being yours and being your own. Something which is yours may be yours just now or until the end of the year, but something being your own (as in “a place of one’s own”) is something you find is yours even as you find it, that is, it is yours in each case.

Step 15 also has no existential import. It merely gathers into a single string two phrases that would otherwise have to be replaced simultaneously in the next step.

Step 16 is an example of existential grammar. When we “take of the real things that are given what” we simply ”do things that”. The ”real things that are given” are haeceities (this-nesses), and the doing-that captures exactly this singularity in the what-for of the deed. (Much as there is a difference between seeing and seeing-as.)

Step 17 is where we give back what we took at 6.

Extra Credit Exercise: An interesting “proof” of this derivation may be imagined by translating line 17 into German. This demands that we find the corresponding expression in demotic German, ca. 1960. From there, each step must be taken in reverse, adjusting as need be for the new materials, with the aim of arriving, after a finite series of steps, at the original German sentence from “Die Kehre”. This, of course, would also constitute a kind of “ontological proof” of Lovitt’s translation (on one sense of Heidegger’s original).