Wan-I Yang Interview | Alexandre Gilbert #278.2

Wan-I Yang, Taiwanese professor at the Institute of Philosophy, National Sun Yat-sen University, participates in the International Colloquium “Current Readings of Levinas’ Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence,” held at Sapienza University of Rome from May 28 to 31, 2025.

The Idea of Thing and Ethicality of Chuangtzu and Heidegger, from the perspective of Ereignis (Part 2)

III. The Desert of Uprooting Modernity, the National Poet and Thinker

The above-mentioned Didier Franck’s interpretation of Heidegger manifests Being losing the nature; it is also been revealed in Heideggerian description of “devastation” in Evening Conversation:

Older Man: And so we are thinking the desert as the deserted [verlassene] expanse of the abandonment [Verlassenheit] of all life. The desert is what really devastates. Hence devastation consists in that everything — world, human, and earth—enters into the abandonment of all life.
Younger Man: Here we are thinking the word “life”—as has often been done since ancient times in occidental thinking—in such breadth that its sphere of meaning coincides with that of the word “being.”
Older Man: But now, insofar as the devastation consists in the abandonment of being, then after all it no longer allows for any beings, such that anything whatsoever that could be affected by it is lacking. Or may we call a historical age in which a form of “life” still in some manner holds sway, “the age of devastation”?
Younger Man: If we may or even must do this, then world, human, and earth can be—and yet, having entered into the devastation, they can nevertheless remain abandoned by being.
Older Man: The being of an age of devastation would then consist precisely in the abandonment of being. Such a matter is, however, difficult to think.
Younger Man: To be sure, it is difficult currently and for the contemporary human, who hardly gives thought to the fact that, under the appearance of a secured and improving life, a disregard—if not indeed a barring—of life could occur. (Heidegger, 1995:212-213; Heidegger, 2010:137-138)

This dialogue refers to a clarification of the meaning of devastation and the abandonment of Being. The passage begins with a general interpretation of desolation, symbolized by the inanimate (without living beings) desert (the deserted expanse of the abandonment of all life). Since occidental thinking used to coincide life (living beings) with the word “Being”, the devastation is explained as “no living beings”, that is, the abandonment of Being. And if we think about the devastation from the image of inanimate desert, the devastation will then signify that there is no being (that is, no living beings), so that the devastation will not involve any life (living things), as a result, can we still imagine a devastating era involving “life”? Accordingly, the younger man tries to consider the meaning of devastation of world, human and earth from older man’s question. Even if the world, human and earth exist, they are still abandoned by Being (life). In this way, the meaning of devastation different from the image of desert is thus revealed. Hence, the question “How to imagine a being abandoned by being?” is identical to the question “how to imagine a life abandoned by life?” That is to say, “Under the representation of life, how, a disregard or a barring of life could occur?”

Let us take trees as an example. If trees are regarded as tools, then the devastation of Being of this kind of living things from the utility, has already obscured their proper state of something that is conceived and fostered by the thinging. Obscuring something’s proper fact of dwelling of the Thing, is cutting its connection with the self-emergence of Ereignis itself. At the same time, it makes the “life” (i.e., the thinging, Ereignis) of trees barred and obstructed, just like the tree as a term being abandoned by “Being” (the self-emergence ability of representation, as if a flower from seeding to blooming), loneliness, lonely suspended in a theoretical or instrumental pedigree.

From this perspective, the devastation of modernity appears in the obstruction of occurrence (Ereignis) itself. The things without the fostering and the conservation of thinging, are thus the dead objects, just like those materialized tools. The uprooting tool (which has lost its own occurrence) has now become something that is controlled, decomposed, manipulated, changed, transformed, exchanged, consumed, produced…by an exterior power, and is used to produce more products. The instrumentalization and utility realized in the uprooting modernity makes production efficiency an indicator of value. But this efficient productive era is paradoxically “allows for nothing that emerges of itself, in its emergence unfolds itself, and in unfolding calls others into a co-emerging.” (Heidegger, 1995:212; Heidegger, 2010:137) Since the uprooting obstructed and barred the occurrence (Ereignis) itself and made “useful thing” loneliness of the thinging and the usefulness of uselessness. This useful thing is like the Thing’s remains without nature, and thus constructs a prosperous modern world with its corpse. Therefore, Heidegger recognizes and portrays the devastation of modernity like:

Younger Man: Because one day, from a more clarified insight into the essence of the devastation, we will recognize that the devastation reigns also and indeed precisely there, where country and people have not been affected by the destruction of the war.
Older Man: And so there, where the world shines with the gleam of advancement, advantages, and fortune; where human rights are respected, where civil order is maintained; and above all where the supply for the continual repletion of an undisturbed contentment is secured, so that everything remains oversecable and arranged and accounted for so as to be useful. (Heidegger, 1995:216; Heidegger, 2010:139)

In the glory of modernity which surrounds those useful things, the gods retired and replaced with human using the tools. As Heidegger said:

Younger Man: The human chases things around in an unrest that is foreign to them by making them into mere resources for his needs and items in his calculations, and into mere opportunities for advancing and maintaining his manipulations.
Older Man: By not letting things be in their restful repose, but rather—infatuated by his progress—stepping over and away from them, the human becomes the pacesetter of the devastation, which has for a long time now become the tumultuous confusion of the world. (Heidegger, 1995:229; Heidegger, 2010:149)

The human who is kidnapped by tools, utility, productivity of modernity, is the subject of instrumental manipulation and simultaneously the object of the organization, institution, and system. This person who abandoned nature and is abandoned by nature not only managed tools but also became a tool, and thus fell into the reproduction process of the eternal recurrence. From this perspective, it seems that it is no longer possible to say that human are obstructing Ereignis itself, neglecting the thinging of Thing and ignoring nature. In fact, those who are involved in this reproduction world cannot simply produce for themselves but produce for their survival. The people who master the tools have simultaneously become the tools. When raw materials, production tools, and vending channels are monopolized, what to produce, how to produce, and the flow of its production…etc., is no longer manipulable, but only the dominated “subject” operating according to modern social laws is left alone.

The subject of the devastation of human, is the specter who has lost the occurrence itself. As if the trees that have been cultivated into straight and restrained branches, are to become the building materials rather than become for themselves; they must be useful to justify their existence. This departure of the thinging caused by human, this concealment of sky and earth, divinities and mortals, will not be able to change in the modernity thinking that takes subject as the core. And only someone who learns to await, awaits for the occurrence itself, for the thinging, for the dwelling of the fourfold that opens up the region conceiving and conserving everything, could re-greet the nature. Heidegger with such understanding thus said that:

Younger Man: The waiting people would even have to be entirely unusable to others, because of course what always only just waits, and constantly waits moreover on the coming, yields nothing tangible that could be of use for progress and raising the achievement curve, and for the brisk pace of business.
Older Man: And this entirely unusable people would have to become the most elderly people, so that no one concerns himself with it and no one makes use of—and so utilizes and prematurely uses up—its strange doing, which is a letting. (Heidegger, 1995:234; Heidegger, 2010:152)

The most elderly unusable people reminds us of the elderly, useless tree in “Free and Easy Wandering” and “In the World of Men”, and the Crippled Shu who was physically useless and Confucius who was ethically useless. Is it possible to say that Heidegger, who has forgotten the name of Chuangtzu, has been embraced and affected by Chuangtzu’s thinking of uselessness? Or is it possible to say that Chuangtzu and Heidegger have both experienced the occurrence itself in the care of thinging? In fact, if thinking differs from the universal knowledge and appears as the occurrence itself or the thinging of Thing, such a question may be difficult to have a definitive answer. Because the relationship between one thinking and another, is not the relationship between one system of knowledge and another, but it manifests in the proper state of the returning things that the waiters are willing to listen to.⁵ In other words, Heidegger and Chuangtzu who had experienced the occurrence itself, has now became one. They are in this mood of facticity, just like the poets and thinkers of the nation highlighted in Evening Conversation.

Conclusion

The concern about “Being” (être) after expelling the occurrence (Ereignis) itself, that is, the source of the self-emerging perplexity, is the metaphysical concern about the ontology. Heidegger in Being and Time unfolds the phenomenal and the instrumental world with the existential-ontological exposition that is different from metaphysical ontology. However, he still focuses on the researches of the phenomenon and tools and thus ignores the occurrence (Ereignis) itself, and thus triggers the “ontological difference” between Being and beings. In the book God, Death and Time (Dieu, la mort et le temps), Levinas once commented on the relationship between Being and the beings in Heideggerian thought:

The radical distinction between being and beings, the famous ontological difference. There is a radical difference between the verbal resonance of the word “being” and its resonance as a noun. It is the difference par excellence. It is Difference. Every difference supposes a certain community; between being and beings, however, there is nothing in common. (This is proposed here as a statement (dit) to be unstated (dé-dire).)⁶

Levinas has concerned that any difference assumes a certain common point. If there is no common point between Being and beings, then Being and beings will not be distinguished. From this point of view, the capital (absolute) difference of the “ontological difference” between Being and beings, has presupposed the impossibility of making a difference. In this sense, the ontological-existential structure will not be distinguished from the metaphysical ontology, unless it recognized that there is a basis of distinction between Being and beings.⁷ On this issue, Levinas, who insists on translating Being-beings into Existence-existents, makes it easier for us to understand the common roots of Being and beings: the Ereignis itself, from the relationship between Existence and existents. From this perspective, the seemingly useless and invisible Ereignis itself highlighted by Didier Franck, is not only shown as the root of Heideggerian ontological difference, but also the source of Being. Therefore, if the metaphysics that Heidegger once said is “the history of the concealing and withdrawal of what gives Being”, then does the awakening of Ereignis itself mean the demise of metaphysics? And does the awakening of Ereignis also make the ontological difference reduce in the thinging of the Thing, and thus lead to the end of the history of Being? As Didier Franck said:

If the essence of what is Greek is essentially other than Greek, then there is nothing Greek in the Appropriation (l’appropriation). But what is meant by that if not the end of the history of Being and the reign of ontological difference? The end of the withdrawal of Being and of its destiny, because the access to the Appropriation supposes that the withdrawal was shown as the withdrawal. “Metaphysics is the oblivion of Being, and that means the history of the concealment and withdrawal of that which gives Being. The entry of thinking into Appropriation is thus equivalent to the end of this withdrawal’s history. The oblivion of Being ‘supersedes’ (hebt auf) itself in the awakening into Appropriation.” The end of the reign of ontological difference, since this one does not go without the insurrection of the present against the presence, without this modification of the constant presence that the withdrawal of the lèthè makes possible, in short, without the withdrawal of the withdrawal, in its own way, the Appropriation puts an end.⁸

The Ereignis itself creates the distinction between Being and beings, yet it removes at the same time the meaning of this distinction during its process of emergence. It is ethical to conceal oneself and serve for others (the Greek). But its emergence, also highlights a different kind of ethic and nourishes everything during the process of reducing all differences. If we consider Ereignis from two extremes, that is, from the concealment and the manifestation, the interpretation of each extreme will define two different ethical significations, so that the paradoxicality of the symbiosis of nothingness and existence will be left behind. On the other hand, if we don’t fall into the two radical extremes, and become impartial and unbiased, we will experience the symbiosis of nothingness and existence, experience the gathering of the selfless, altruistic fourfold. Therefore, a world of thinging of the Thing will unfold to us. We will integrate into the selfless concealment and the transforming, unfolding nature, into their ethical characteristics of endless vitality and the symbiosis of nothingness and existence.

Bibliography

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