Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
To be quiet for a moment

3.

This question gets us straight into Heidegger's philosophy. Not primarily, however, into his reflection on death but into the concept of composure (»Gelassenheit«) - which for Heidegger was the right attitude of being-in-the-world, an attitude also that was thought to be capable of overcoming the everyday epistemology of the »Subject« (to which he usually refers under the name of »metaphysics«). In order to make a potentially long story extremely short, let me say that Heidegger seems to associate with the concepts of the »Subject« and of »metaphysics« everything that I am longing for art to redeem me of. Being excentric in relation to the world of objects, the Subject constantly »makes sense« of the world (the word »metaphysics« referring here to the double-layeredness of a world whose surfaces offer themselves as signifiers to be read for underlying meanings). The subject , thus, constantly produces Erkenntnis - with the ultimate goal of transforming the world. What the subject is incapable of is to let be - and this is the (surprisingly simple) reason why the notion of Gelassenheit has absorbed, within Heidegger's philosophy, most of the energy that pushes him towards building an everyday epistemology that would be an alternative to metaphysics. Gelassenheit, composure is a prerequisit (not a guarantee) for not interpreting and for not transforming the world - in positive terms: Gelassenheit is a prerequisit for letting happen the unconcealment of Being.