Thinking the Event. François Raffoul
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why’ says that the rose has no grounds. Contrary to this, the ‘because’ in the same verse says, roughly speaking, that the rose has a ground,” GA 10, 61/PR, 41) because the because is not the same as the why. More precisely, they have a different relation to ground. “Does this word not name the relationship to a ground by dragging one in, so to speak? The rose—without why and yet not without a because. So the poet contradicts himself and speaks obscurely. Indeed the mystical consists in this sort of thing. But the poet speaks clearly. ‘Why’ and ‘because’ mean different things.” What is the difference? The difference is in the relation to ground: “‘Why’ is the word for the question concerning grounds. The ‘because’ contains the answer-yielding reference to grounds. The ‘why’ seeks grounds. The ‘because’ conveys grounds” (GA 10, 55/PR, 36). To that extent, as Heidegger puts it, “something such as a rose can simultaneously have a ground and be without grounds” (GA 10, 61/PR, 41). In the “why,” the relation to ground is one of seeking. In the “because,” it is one of providing or conveying. A seeking of reason (the “why”) is replaced by a providing of reasons. “The ‘why’ and ‘because’ speak of a relationship of our cognition to grounds, a relationship that at times varies. In the ‘why’ we question, we pursue grounds. In the ‘because’ we retrieve grounds in giving an answer” (GA 10, 61/PR, 41). In the because, a reason is given.
But what kind of “reason” is here brought forth? Heidegger’s answer is most revealing: it is not a reason that is “other” than what it is the reason of (for in our ordinary understanding, “the ‘because’ is supposed to supply something else, something we can understand as the reason for whatever is to be founded,” GA 10, 63/PR, 43), but it is a reason that belongs to the thing itself: it is as if the meaning of the thing was entirely contained in the thing itself. When Angelus Silesius states that the rose blooms because it blooms, he indicates through this tautology the self-sameness of the event of the rose in its sheer appearing. “What does this mean, the rose ‘blooms, because it blooms’? Here the ‘because’ does not, as is ordinary, point off toward something else which is not a blooming and which is supposed to found the blooming from somewhere else. The ‘because’ of the fragment simply points the blooming back to itself. The blooming is grounded in itself, it has its ground with and in itself. The blooming is a pure arising on its own, a pure shining” (GA 10, 84–85/PR, 57). The reason here is the pure event of the blooming. Is anything said in the tautology beyond the empty repetition of the same, as Heidegger asks rhetorically: “But Angelus Silesius says: ‘It blooms, because it blooms.’ This really says nothing, for the ‘because’ is supposed to supply something else, something we can understand as the reason for whatever is to be founded” (GA 10, 63/PR, 42–43). In fact, this tautology, far from saying nothing, says all that is to be said: “But this apparently vacuous talk—‘it blooms, because it blooms’—really says everything, namely, it says everything there is to say here” (GA 10, 63/PR, 43). What is that “everything”? “Everything” here means the entire being of the thing in question, its whole event. The reason given is harbored entirely within the event of the being: “The ‘because’ names the ground, but in the fragment the ground is the simple blooming of the rose, the fact of its being a rose or its rose-being [ihr Rose-sein]” (GA 10, 84/PR, 57, trans. slightly modified), its “rose-hood,” so to speak. Tautology for Heidegger may be a thinking that is more “rigorous” than any scientific causal thought (we know how Heidegger claimed in the Thor seminar that tautological thinking is “the primordial sense of phenomenology,” der ursprüngliche Sinn der Phänomenologie),17 a kind of thinking that comes before scientific representations and the distinction between theory and praxis. Such are the stakes of Heidegger’s contrast between the why and the because: the event reaches further than reason, that is, the reason that asks “why.” In fact, the because precedes the why; the seeking of the why presupposes the prior giving of the because. Heidegger explains that “in order for the rose to bloom, it does not need reasons rendered in which its blooming is grounded. The rose is a rose without a reddere rationem, a rendering of reasons, having to belong to its rose-being” (GA 10, 57/PR, 37).
It would then be a matter of returning the reason back to the being in its happening, as when Jean-Luc Nancy suggests, with respect to the being of the world, that it is a fact without reason. With respect to the event of the world, he writes in The Creation of the World, it might be necessary to consider “a fact without referring it to a cause (either efficient nor final). The world is such a fact: 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