the verb phainô, which means to light up, to make visible. The word phaos-phôs, light, has the same root: the adverb phainomenôs means manifestly or visibly. A phenomenon is what appears, what shows itself.4 The phenomenon is approached by Heidegger in its verbal sense, that is, as that which shows or manifests itself of itself and from itself, and not simply as the ontical given or as the entity.
The term phenomenology is formed from two Greek words, phainomenon and logos. Phenomenology is a bringing to light of the phenomena in their original givenness, a legein, a “letting something be seen [sehen lassen]” (SZ, 34). (I note here again how the motif of letting, lassen, is inscribed in phenomenology itself and in fact is inherent in the givenness of the phenomenon proper. It will always be a matter of letting the phenomenon give itself, and not of making it appear or constituting it via the intentional powers of a subjectivity.) Now, if phenomenology is a “letting be seen,” then the phenomenon of phenomenology cannot be that which is simply apparent or manifest; the phenomenon, precisely as that which is to be made phenomenologically visible, must be approached as that which not show itself (while nonetheless belonging to what shows itself, for Heidegger also stresses that “‘behind’ the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else,” SZ, 36): “What is it that must be called a ‘phenomenon’ in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground” (SZ, 35). Heidegger shows that the very concept of phenomenology, insofar as it is defined, as noted prior, as a “letting something be seen,” necessarily implies the withdrawal of the phenomenon. “And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology” (SZ, 36), Heidegger writes provocatively. Phenomenology, in its very essence, is thus a phenomenology of what does not appear, to refer to Heidegger’s characterization of the most authentic sense of phenomenology as a phenomenology of the inapparent (Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren) in the 1973 Zähringen seminar. “We are here in the domain of the inapparent: presencing itself presences. . . . Thus understood, phenomenology is a path that leads away to come before . . . and it lets that before which it is led show itself. This phenomenology is a phenomenology of the inapparent.”5 The original phenomenon is what does not appear, not behind what appears (as if it was a noumenal reality), but in what appears. The original phenomenon is the inapparent.6
Now, for Heidegger, what does not appear in what appears is being: “Yet that which remains hidden in an egregious sense, or which relapses and gets covered up again, or which shows itself only ‘in disguise,’ is just not this entity or that, but rather the being of beings” (SZ, 38).7 The phenomenon in the authentic sense designates the being of entities, not the entity itself. With that claim, Heidegger severs the connection between the phenomenon and the ontic (although the ontic still retains the movement and eventfulness of being: a being is what it is only by virtue of being; it would not be a being otherwise and could not be present except for the movement of presence that brought it forth and that it manifests). The phenomenon is not simply the given, not the entity, but what does not appear in what appears, and which for that reason calls for and requires a phenomenology, Heidegger speaking in his course on Plato’s Sophist of “a constant struggle against the tendency to cover over residing at the heart of Dasein.”8 Since for Heidegger being is never a being or a thing, but the event of the coming into presence of such beings, one can already suspect that a phenomenon in the proper phenomenological sense means “event.”9 The task then becomes to understand phenomenology as a phenomenology of the event, which is the purpose of this chapter.
Let me first clarify the concept of phenomenology. At first, phenomenology can be understood as an approach that opposes the dogmatic constructions of theories that are detached from the primordial meaning of phenomena. The very idea of phenomenology is that of a return to the “things themselves”—to the phenomena—via a dismantling of artificial conceptual constructs that obstruct the original givenness of phenomena. In section 7 of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger explains: “The term ‘phenomenology’ expresses a maxim which can be formulated as ‘To the things themselves!’ It is opposed to all free-floating constructions [freischwebenden Konstruktionen],” that is, to all “accidental findings,” to conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated . . . [and] to those pseudo-questions [Scheinfragen] which parade themselves as ‘problems,’ often for generations at a time” (SZ, 27–28). The full concept of phenomenology implies a twofold movement: on the one hand, a distancing from derivative conceptual constructions, and on the other, a positive inquiry into the being of the phenomenon. To this twofold aspect, Heidegger will add a third in the 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, where he distinguishes three fundamental features of phenomenology: reduction, construction, and destruction (Destruktion). We will see how these three features, as Heidegger defines them, open the way for an understanding of phenomenology as a phenomenology of the event.
In that 1927 course, Heidegger begins by defining phenomenology as the very method of ontology, allowing him to grasp the phenomena (in contrast with Husserl), not in relation to a constituting consciousness, but to the event of being as such. Indeed, Heidegger stresses that phenomenology is concerned about the being of phenomena, their modes of givenness, their happening. Unlike his former mentor, Heidegger defines phenomenology in relation to ontology, as giving us access to the being of beings. The opposition that Husserl established between phenomenology and ontology, or rather the “bracketing” of ontological themes in the transcendental phenomenological reduction, is a foreclosure of ontology that can be said to be rooted in the determination of phenomenology as a transcendental idealism, that is, in the subjection of phenomenology to a traditional (Cartesian) idea of philosophy. For Heidegger, on the contrary, as he already stated in Being and Time, ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct disciplines, for indeed phenomenology is the “way of access to the theme of ontology” (SZ, 35). Heidegger is very clear on this point: “With regard to its subject-matter, phenomenology is the science of the Being of entities—ontology” (SZ, 37). In turn, and most importantly, ontology itself “is only possible as phenomenology” (SZ, 35, modified). In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger defines phenomenology as an “a priori knowledge” of being.10 Phenomenology is that mode of knowledge that seeks to bring out the a priori structures of being and to that extent is distinct from all ontical sciences. If being appears as the a priori of beings, in the sense that it determines beings as beings, phenomenology “as a science of Being is fundamentally distinct in method from any other science” (GA 24, 28/20). These sciences are positive sciences, sciences of beings; phenomenology, for its part, is a “pure apprehension of Being” (GA 24, 28/19). It is an ontology.
Now, this ontological understanding of phenomenology will prove crucial for our thinking of the event, for the emphasis shifts from phenomena (things) to the being of these phenomena (their happening or eventfulness), from phenomena to phenomenality. As alluded to earlier, phenomenology consists in showing, not the appearance itself, but the event of its appearing. Jean-Luc Marion clarifies, “If in the realm of metaphysics it is a question of proving, in the phenomenological realm it is not a question of simply showing (since in this case apparition could still be the object of a gaze, therefore a mere appearance), but rather of letting apparition show itself in its appearance according to its appearing.”11 This is what Marion calls phenomenality or manifestation, which, I should note from the outset, is a self-manifestation, that is, not initiated by some agent or subject but happening from itself. “The privilege of appearing in its appearance is also named manifestation—manifestation of the thing starting from itself and as itself, privilege of rendering itself manifest, of making itself visible, of showing itself”
