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Angst (dread) 

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THE THING AND THE WORK

What, in truth, is a thing insofar as it is a thing? When we ask this question we wish to know the 
thing-being (the thingliness) of the thing. The point is to learn the thingliness of the thing. 
To this end we must become acquainted with the sphere within which are to be found all those 
beings which we have long called things. 

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Richard Dawkins is not the only living theologian, (or a-theologian), but to admit the presence of 
something parenthetical to a reality, one must mention that in the opinion of Kierkegaard much of 
Aristotle’s first philosophy was what was, by Kierkegaard's day, considered theological. (Theology, 
as metaphysics, becomes corse outpouring of the claim that man is unimportant in the face of what 
alone brings grace. I.e., the universe. This completes the West as such, which is what effaces man 
utterly, and denies utterly all thought, as what is merely human. And neither of the radical 
"Elsewhere" of Platonic before. Or, of the uppermost rationalist inner-postive-law of medieval Deus. Nor
(once we have thought through this, leaving it behind) of universe, 
as site of the modern ideal of the flight form "folk" or mere man.) Which lets us ask: Why is there 
never simply a grasp of all the things, as they are, free of the rebuke: “Why should we seek to deceive 
ourselves?”. The question of the talk about the thing is closest to us in the bland talk about facts, 
facts, if one looks into it, are voluntary acts. One voluntarily runs an experiment, and in this way 
establishes truths as facts. After this grand Idea, that of Science, all things are called facts. And no 
more is left for the human being (for all willing follows the will to establish facts). Yet, in former times, 
while the human being was not yet a total subject, a proclaimer of values, living amidst a totality, 
that of all (objective) facts, there was the West, not yet, planetary picturing as the correctly stored ostensive which allowed 
for no logos. 

Kant answers the question about what the whole stock of things are with the phrase:  
Bewustsstein uberhaupt, Kant’s phrase which means a conspiratorial (Mitwissen) aperception, 
a knowing amongst compatriots, is in the work with the title Heidegger: Mitsein. This is misleading, 
for Mitsein is never thought as mere uberhaupt, standing reserve. Or, is it? The question here is this, 
is the text called Heidegger a kind of joke? Meaning, does it propound, as true, the end of philosophy, 
thereby repudiating all claims of truth? Or, rather, does it set aside truth as “what everything 
depends on”? Everything, to be sure, in Kant, depends on transcendental aperception, on the 
stock of things uberhaupt. On the philosophy of transcendental aperception. 

Uberhaupt is said in contradistinction to logic (but also to rough empiricism). Rather than a rule, 
like the rules of math or chess, it speaks to experience. In this sense Denken, or thinking, is thought in the text called 
Heidegger as not knowing: I know I stand on solid ground, how?, I feel it. Instead of knowing, 
one thinks. Experience as thought is the Husserlian putting into doubt. I know the earth stands 
still, how, for I see it. I know the earth moves, how, for I see it. The sense of knowing loses its 
basic trustworthiness. It becomes, instead, certain, in the sense that standing still is still standing 
still after a fashion. It can be marked down as such. In the sense of a mathematical set of the 
things that are still. But, in the sense of uberhaupt, there is no possibility to remove the 
self-referencing of the set of all sets. The stock of things demands the setting aside of the 
human being as myth. 

In the text called Heidegger this becomes thought. No more is there a knowing, but rather, thought. 
Experience as thought is not reasoning, or not only. I am tired, I think, what am I to do, sleep. 
Such is reason as thought. Reason as thought can be set alongside action. I come to the 
conclusion that I should sleep, common sense, but I may or may not act on it. Reason is 
thought, but thought is also knowing. Knowing is no longer knowing, it is not to be expected 
as a rising up out of opining. Knowing has become thinking, and now we are attempting to 
think thinking as art. According to Kierkegaard man can not have fallen. Whatever being would 
be said to have fallen would not be man. Man as such is already in dread 
(however-much this appears as unremarkable every day meaninglessness). The dread of the 
break from aperception, which is awareness, but not asking, what should I do, should I go 
this way, or that way, should I do what I did yesterday? Or, is there a better thing to do? The 
dread of the highest awareness of this essential holding sway of the human being as the 
perfectibility of all things is called sorge in the text called Heidegger. Ergo, even though the 
Element, as what is ébauche, rough sketch, that shows in the phenomenological description 
of boredom as leading to its full being, suggests the move to the full being of concern as 
dread as its coming to hold command over what is.