In the 1969 Le Thor seminar, Heidegger stated that his philosophical journey could be characterized by three different themes: meaning, truth, place. The first two of these have been the subject of countless studies and discussions, but the question of place is still relatively unexplored in Heidegger’s thought, despite the increased interest for this topic in his writings. Even though scholars like Jeff Malpas, Edward Casey, Stuart Elden and Miguel de Beistegui have written books and essays on the importance of the conception of place in Heidegger’s thinking, there are still many important aspects of this theme to be discussed, given the importance Heidegger himself ascribed to this topic. In this essay, I therefore wish to pose the question of how one can understand the relation between place and the role of tragedy in Heidegger’s conception of truth. My bearing thesis will be that these three concepts: place, truth and tragedy stand in a symbiotic relationship to each other and thus form the foundation of the Heideggerian thinking of place, or topological thinking. For this reason, the purpose of this paper is to present an interpretation of how the tragic is grasped in its relation to place. This I will do by turning to three texts from the period in Heidegger’s thought which has come to be known as ‘the turn’, a period which usually is understood to have occurred in the 1930s and the early 1940s. The texts I have in mind are for one the aesthetic essay The Origin of the Work of Art, and secondly the two interpretations of the first chorus from Antigone, found in Introduction to Metaphysics and Hölderlin’s Hymn ‘The Ister’. The Origin of the Work of Art can thus be said to serve as a theoretical introduction or framework to Heidegger’s conception of truth, whereas my analysis of the two interpretations from Antigone will look closer into how truth explicitly can be said to stand in a dependent relationship to place and tragedy. This becomes particularly relevant in the part of the interpretation where Heidegger puts emphasis on the word polis, a word he understands as the place or the There where truth resides. However, one cannot write on this topic without mentioning the political problems this gives rise to, considering the time and place and by whom the texts were written. Therefore I will have an ongoing discussion of this problematic aspect in the topological thinking of Heidegger, which I will intertwine in the text. This is not to say that my sole ambition is to point out the despicable in Heidegger’s political engagement (which should be obvious), but rather to try to give a foundation for discussion on whether it’s possible to find a way to think productively on the theme of place, truth and tragedy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-26762 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Kjell, Mikael |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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