Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual

Volume 9, 2019

Onur Karamercan

The Place-Being of the Clearing and Language
Reading Thomas Sheehan Topologically

I elucidate Heidegger’s understanding of the “place-being” of the “question of being.” My premises are: 1) Heidegger’s “question of being” can be appropriately made sense of as the “question of language.” 2) The “question of language” requires a topological approach that looks into the link between the place-nature of language and the open-bounded essence of human existence. First, I explain the topological underpinnings of Heidegger’s later thought of being as the clearing and language; second, I examine Sheehan’s phenomenological reading of Heidegger by focusing on the relationship between alētheia and appropriation (Ereignis). In the first section, I explain the correlation between place and language within the context of the “question of being” and display how understanding the former is crucial in having a more complete perspective for the latter. In the second section, I examine Sheehan’s acknowledgment of Heidegger’s idea of place (topos) in his understanding of the nature of human existence in relation to Ereignis, while criticizing the “metaphorical” reading of the “placebeing” of the clearing.