it may well be that it is the only fact of this kind (if it is the case that the other facts take place within the world). It is a fact without reason or end, and it is our fact. To think it, is to think this factuality, which implies not referring it to a meaning capable of appropriating it, but to placing in it, in its truth as a fact, all possible meaning.”18 Nancy refers several times in this book to the “mystical” rose in terms of the fact of a world without reason and ground, devoid of any given principle or determined end, and he explicitly refers to Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason (CW, 47, 120, n. 20), associating it with Wittgenstein’s statement: “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists” (cited in CW, 52). The tautology of the because—the rose blooms because it blooms—indicates that the reason is resituated in the being of the rose and that in fact this might be its highest reason.19
Ultimately for Heidegger, the “because” bears the features of both being and groundlessness. (a) Of being, as Heidegger connects the “because” (das Weil) with the “while” of being. In fact, Heidegger goes so far as to claim that the “because” designates the “essence of being” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). In what sense? Heidegger explains that weil is a diminutive of dieweilen, which means “whereas,” “while.” He then cites as a support the old saying, “One must strike the iron while [weil] it is hot.” To that extent, weil not only has the causal sense of the “because,” but also that of a temporal presence. “‘To while’ [Weilen] means: ‘to tarry,’ ‘to remain still,’ ‘to pause and keep to oneself,’ namely in rest” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). Now, to while, to remain, to tarry, to last, all these terms designate the old sense of the word being. Indeed, Heidegger associates being with what lasts, wesen with währen, evoking that “assembling of what does not pass away, but which comes to be, that is, lasts [sondern west, d. h. währt]” (GA 10, 89/PR, 60, trans. slightly modified).20 Thus weil does not mean “because” but “while” (dieweilen). “Here the ‘while’ in no way means: ‘since-because,’ rather ‘while’ denotes dieweilen [whereas], which means, as long as—the iron is hot—during. ‘To while’ [Weilen] means: ‘to tarry,’ ‘to remain still,’ ‘to pause and keep to oneself,’ namely in rest” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). Further, elaborating on the contrast between “why” and “because,” Heidegger associates “whileness” and “perdurance” with the sheer presence of being upon which everything rests. “The while [weil] that every founding and every ‘why’ guards against names the simple, plain presence that is without why—the presence upon which everything depends, upon which everything rests.” The while names the presence of being as such. “But qua the Whereas, ‘whiling’ also names ‘the abiding’: being” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). The while names both being and the ground, it names the abiding of reason as ground. This is how being and reason/ground: the same. Reason/ground and being hold together in the weil, both abiding and ground, both “because” and “while.” To that extent, weil also designates groundlessness.
(b) As stated prior, Heidegger opposes the because to the why. We are asked to leave the why for the because. He cites Goethe, who wrote: “How? When? and Where?—The gods remain mute! You stick to the because and ask not why?” (cited in GA 10, 185/PR, 126).21 What does it mean to “stick to the because”? Heidegger sees in the weil the abiding and lingering of a being in its being. Such abiding represents the being of beings, the ontological site for beings. As such, it represents the ground, ontologically understood, and no longer ontically. It is the ground in this following sense: “Ground is that upon which everything rests, that which is already present as what supports all beings” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). This is the ground that the weil, as lasting presence, designates. The weil in this sense is the essence of ground, the ontological ground. “The ‘because’ names this supportive presence before which we simply pause. The ‘because’ points to the essence of grounds” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). Insofar as being and ground/reason: the Same, then the weil represents the essence of being. Just as being, then, the weil is, as ground, at once groundless. In contrast with the why, always in quest of foundations, the because remains groundless. The “because” suspends the “why”: “What does ‘because’ mean? It guards against investigating the ‘why,’ therefore, against investigating foundations. It balks at founding and getting to the bottom of something. For the ‘because’ is without ‘why,’ it has no ground, it is ground itself” (GA 10, 186/PR, 127). The why yields to the because: “the force of the claim of the why submits to the enabling appeal of the ‘because’” (GA 10, 188/PR, 128). The event of being remains groundless, without reason, without a why. In the words of Heidegger, being “is groundless and therefore does not know any ‘why.’” Being is “sheer, pure event” (reines Er-eignis).22
Freed up from the demands of reason, arising out of a withdrawal of essence and theological foundation, the event surges as a groundless happening. This lack of foundation beneath the event and the (self-)deconstruction of the metaphysical apparatus suggest that the event is to be taken as the original phenomenon. This opens the way for a new philosophical approach to the event, faithful to its eventfulness without attempting to reduce it to the demands of reason. It opens the way for a phenomenological investigation of the event, the task of the next chapter.
The Concept of Phenomenology
The dismantling—deconstruction—of the metaphysical conceptual apparatus of causality, subjectivity, and reason, as it structured the traditional reduction and neutralization of the event, opens the way for a phenomenological investigation into the eventfulness of the event. Once the event is no longer referred to the demands of the principle of reason, no longer anchored in a subject-cause, and no longer ordered according to a causal order, it becomes possible to let it give itself to thinking, in its proper eventfulness. “Thinking the event” would here mean no longer subjecting the event to reason, but letting it be (in particular if thinking itself is approached as a kind of letting-be or Gelassenheit1), and in fact grasping phenomenality itself as event, if it is the case, as Françoise Dastur argues, that “there can be no thinking of the event which is not at the same time a thinking of phenomenality.”2 Phenomenality could then be rethought, no longer as objectivity, but as an eventful field. If thinking the event means to give thought to the being of the event, not to what happens, nor to why it happens, but to the fact that it happens, then an encounter with phenomenology becomes unavoidable. Indeed, Heidegger states in Being and Time that phenomena are never simply the given, but instead the event of givenness. This from the outset suggests that phenomenality is to be taken as an eventful phenomenality and phenomenology as a phenomenology of the event.
Are phenomena events in the proper sense? As just mentioned, a phenomenon, that is, the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned, cannot be reduced to an empirical intuition, an ontical given. In fact, Heidegger rejects explicitly the Kantian notion of an “empirical intuition” to designate the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned.3 The phenomenon cannot be reduced to the category of the given and is instead defined from the outset by Heidegger in paragraph 7 of Being and Time as an event, that is, the event of givenness. The phenomenon must be approached in its verbal sense as that which shows or manifests itself of itself and from itself: “Thus we must keep in mind that the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest” (SZ, 28). The phenomenon is “the-showing-itself-in-itself (das Sich-an-ihm-selbst-zeigen)” (SZ, 31), which indicates that by phenomenon Heidegger means the verbal sense of an appearing, and not simply an appearance. The term phenomenon has its roots in the Greek verb phainestai and means “to appear,” “to show itself.” As a middle-voice construction of phaino, phainestai means to bring to light, to place
