10.13135/2036-542X/7962
Postmodern hermeneutics strongly opposes itself to Heidegger’s alleged anti–modernism. This opposition is found in the weak thought developed by Vattimo and Caputo, and in this article I will argue that their dismissal of Heidegger’s nostalgia relies on a problematic distinction between Heidegger’s progressive, leftist non–foundationalism and his rightist, nostalgic eschatology. This distinction is problematic for two reasons: Firstly, it overlooks the crucial link between Heidegger’s notion of belonging (Zugehörigkeit) and attunements (Stimmungen) that provides Heidegger’s nostalgia with a hermeneutic importance, and, secondly, it assumes that Heidegger actually wants to return to a time prior to metaphysics, whereby it fails to take into account the late Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysics of the will. These two points I take to be defining for the affectivity central to Heideggerian hermeneutics and, consequently, to be crucial for any hermeneutics with emancipatory ambitions. If weak thought is still embedded in the metaphysics of the will, we must strive to make it even weaker by considering the Heideggerian terms Freilassen and Gelassenheit, which will reveal that nostalgia is not politically dangerous but, rather, emancipatory insofar as it seeks to free a different mode of experience beyond the willful metaphysics of Gestell.
application/pdf
2036-542X
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Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen
Trópos
Nostalgic Freilassen: 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
8
Monografica
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
55-75
1
Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen
2015/07/15
10.13135/2036-542X/7962
55
2036-542X
1
75
Nostalgic Freilassen: 
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7962/6692
8
                                                     trópos • anno VIII • numero 1 • 2015 – ISBN 978-88-548-8594-3
                                                          DOI 10.4399/97888548859434 – pag. 55-75 (giugno 2015)




                                                           Nostalgic Freilassen
                                            Emancipation beyond Empowerment

                                                          N K K



   : Postmodern hermeneutics strongly opposes itself to Heidegger’s alleged
      anti–modernism. This opposition is found in the weak thought developed
      by Vattimo and Caputo, and in this article I will argue that their dismissal of
      Heidegger’s nostalgia relies on a problematic distinction between Heidegger’s
      progressive, leftist non–foundationalism and his rightist, nostalgic eschatology.
      This distinction is problematic for two reasons: Firstly, it overlooks the crucial
      link between Heidegger’s notion of belonging (Zugehörigkeit) and attunements
      (Stimmungen) that provides Heidegger’s nostalgia with a hermeneutic importan-
      ce, and, secondly, it assumes that Heidegger actually wants to return to a time
      prior to metaphysics, whereby it fails to take into account the late Heidegger’s
      critique of the metaphysics of the will. These two points I take to be defining
      for the affectivity central to Heideggerian hermeneutics and, consequently, to
      be crucial for any hermeneutics with emancipatory ambitions. If weak thought
      is still embedded in the metaphysics of the will, we must strive to make it
      even weaker by considering the Heideggerian terms Freilassen and Gelassenheit,
      which will reveal that nostalgia is not politically dangerous but, rather, eman-
      cipatory insofar as it seeks to free a different mode of experience beyond the
      willful metaphysics of Gestell.

   : Heidegger, Nostalgia, Gelassenheit, Letting–be, Setting–free.

Postmodernity distances itself from any kind of anti–modernism. An-
ti–modernism is seen as politically dangerous and theoretically unsound.
This is even evident in hermeneutics — a philosophical discipline always
known for its emphasis on tradition — which Gianni Vattimo and John Ca-
puto have taken into the era of postmodernity. This anti–anti–modernism
is particularly clear in their readings and reception of Heidegger. On the
one hand, Heidegger provides postmodern hermeneutics with its inaugu-
rating impetus through his attempts to overcome (verwinden) the history
of metaphysics. But on the other hand, both Vattimo and Caputo distance
themselves from parts of Heidegger’s thinking, insofar as these parts are
deemed to, firstly, contradict the postmodern rejection of metaphysics and,
secondly, to conflict with the emancipatory ambitions of this branch of
philosophy. In this article, I will critically discuss Vattimo’s and Caputo’s
readings of Heidegger and especially their assessment of his nostalgia, in

                                                                                                              
      Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


order to point out an alternative way for a weak thought with hopes of
emancipation.
    Hermeneutics and hermeneutic phenomenology suggests that our per-
ception of the world is affected by our cultural and linguistic horizons.
Humans are ontologically situated or thrown into the world, and our under-
standing is intrinsically marked by this context. In Heidegger’s late thought
the keyword for this hermeneutic ontology is belonging or Zugehörigkeit,
which literally means listening–to. This designates that the manifestation of
the world — even though it is shaped by our understanding — is not the
result of human activity, but something that happens pre–reflectively. The
opening of the world through language and history happens outside of the
control of the individual. It does not rely on our projections or utterances,
but rather on our ability to listen–to and get affected–by our surroundings. As
Heidegger famously states, die Sprache spricht, and this is what the human
listens to. This relation makes language and history (or, as Heidegger would
say more generally, Being) the primary actor, and positions the human as a
respondent. The human is, ontologically, not acting but affected .
    Postmodern hermeneutics reflects this affectivity when it insists that
there can be no ultimate formulation of the structure of Being. Being affects
us, but is essentially self–withdrawing. In this way, there is no metaphysi-
cal certainty, only different expressions of this affective relationship. This
is not to be understood as a failure for philosophy; rather, postmodern
hermeneutics insists that this weakening allows new acts of freedom.
    In section  and , I will outline the hermeneutic ontologies of, respec-
tively, Vattimo and Caputo and emphasize how they seek to extrapolate
the emancipatory potential in the late Heidegger. In section , I will argue
that Caputo and Vattimo share the assumption that we can easily distin-
guish between Heidegger’s leftist non–foundationalism and his nostalgic,
rightist foundationalism. This distinction, as I argue in section , makes it
impossible for us to fully understand Heidegger’s affective Zugehörigkeit,
because it fails to realize that Heidegger’s nostalgia is not an unwarranted
metaphysical claim, but rather a hermeneutically important attunement or
Stimmung. Section  will show the consequences of such a reassessment
in which Heidegger’s nostalgia is held to be an attempt to set us free from
the technological will to will that characterizes Gestell. The assumption that
Heidegger wants us to return to a time prior to modernity overlooks the

      . This, however, is not to be understood in terms of a causal determinism or some sort of
fatalism. Heidegger often hints at a secondary meaning of the German word for determination,
Be–stimmung: attunement. According to Heideggerian ontology, attunements are a way of being in
the world that opens up a certain space of possibilities. To be historically determined is to be thrown
into such a particular space of possibilities. This notion of attunement will be discussed further in
section .
                                                        Nostalgic Freilassen   


link between Gestell and the metaphysics of the will. In fact, Heidegger’s
nostalgia seeks to undo the willful disclosure of Being in general, by offe-
ring us a different disclosure of the world. As my emphasis on attunements
shows, the liberation sought by Heidegger’s hermeneutics does not seek
to open or broaden a field of action, but, instead, to set different modes of
experience free. The postmodern dismissal of nostalgia thus reveals that weak
thought is, paradoxically, still too powerful and still operating within the
domain of the will that Heidegger sought to undo. What I suggest through
my reading of Heidegger is a radicalized weakness that seeks emancipation
beyond empowerment in the domain of experience.


. Vattimo’s hermeneutic nihilism insists, by way of an interpretation of
the historical situation, that there are no strong structures of Being, i.e., no
universal, stable structures that order the world, but only weak occurrences
of Being in the form of historico–cultural horizons, and as such there
is no truth independent of interpretation. In doing so, Vattimo seeks to
cleanse hermeneutics from a metaphysical residue and thus to prove it
the philosophy of the ‘postmodern condition’ par excellence. The question
is, however, in what way philosophy is still meaningful if truth — and
with it any claim to objectivity and universality — has been dissolved into
interpretations? In order to answer this question and illuminate what Vattimo
believes to be the emancipatory potential of hermeneutics after the death of
God, I will, firstly, show that the form of interpretation that he believes to be
a response to our postmodern condition is based on Heideggerian themes,
and, secondly, spell out what he takes to be the political consequences of
this view on hermeneutics.
    Dwelling, the determining factor of human understanding, experience,
and even truth itself, is seen as “an interpretative belonging” (V :
) to tradition or Überlieferung. He explains this relation by saying that
“[t]radition is the transmitting of linguistic messages that constitute the
horizon within which Dasein is thrown as a historically determined project”
(V : ). In this way, Dasein’s dwelling is historical in the sense
of Geschick, i.e., a relation, where the human being receives its understan-
ding in a destinal determination, in the form of a Be–stimmung, that is, a
non–deterministic attunement. The tradition is “the horizon of disclosure in
which things appear” (ibid.: ), and as such it is a trans–mission (Schickung)
from the past, outside of the control of the subject. The experience of Being,
delivered to the human through Geschick, is thus “an experience of the
reception of, and response to, these transmissions” (ibid.: ).
    Dasein belongs to Being and is embedded in a tradition. This is not a
form of determinism, since the relation to the past implied in Überlieferung
      Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


is not causal, but one in which Dasein is offered or handed–over messages
to which it can respond. As Zabala, whose position is remarkably close
to Vattimo’s, puts it, “interpretation is, in itself, a response to a message,
an articulated response to its own belonging, tradition, and history from
which it arises” (Z : ). Vattimo and Zabala thus present an
anti–subjectivism, in which Being, in the form of Geschick, is “in the driver’s
seat” (ibid.: ). By responding through interpretation Dasein can become a
sort of hermeneutic co–driver.
    Since Being is something delivered to man, interpretation is not only
aimed at what is delivered through the tradition; this deliverance is the very
condition of one’s interpretation. This implies a hermeneutic doubleness with
ontological consequences: On the one hand, there is the Überlieferung in its
particular instances, where philosophy, literature, religion, science, etc. are to
be interpreted as an expression of a concrete historico–cultural horizon. This
amounts to the weak structures of Being, in which concrete phenomena or
transmissions are taken as expressions of our hermeneutic situation. But on
the other hand, this is accompanied by a stronger mode of alterity, insofar
as every transmission seems to contain something incomprehensible and
self–withdrawing. Vattimo calls this, following Heidegger, Erde (cfr. V
: , ) or das Selbe:

     [W]e can say that in history as a transmission of messages, the Same is the un-
     thought that presents itself in each proposition as reserve, as that residuum of
     transcendence conserved by a proposition in every response, and it is to this ‘un-
     said’, this ‘unthought’, that the dialogue with the past relates, which inasmuch as
     it is unthought, is never past but also always yet to come . . . But the being of the
     Same, precisely to the extent that it remains unsaid, can be ‘proved’ only by the very
     fact of transmission (V : , my emphasis).

    In the responsive interpretation of the Überlieferung there is a “reserve”
or “residuum of transcendence” that remains unthought. This unthought
is not a substance, but rather the self–withdrawal of every Geshick. Every
response is given to something that happens as a particular transmission, but
this also means that ‘something’ exceeds the belonging/response–relation
of interpretation, something keeps itself in ‘reserve’ — as the instance that
gives or sends these transmissions. This something is what Heidegger calls
Ereignis and can be understood as a happening that inaugurates a difference
between Being and being. As such, it is the very process of Geschick, in
which Dasein happens by being thrown into history and language, which
enables it to respond to these conditions.
    That this difference between Überlieferung and das Selbe is crucial in
Vattimo’s account of hermeneutics is evident when we consider his re–/in-
terpretation of Heidegger’s Andenken, re–collection:
                                                                 Nostalgic Freilassen        


   What do we really experience in taking the leap, the step back, in the oscillation
   set in motion by Ge–Stell and unfolding in finite dialogue with Ueberlieferung? We
   are not experiencing some metaphysical unity or Equal; rather, we experience the
   Same, which is in fact only that in respect to which the individual historical/destinal
   Prägungen of the man–Being relation are constituted and destituted in their finitu-
   de, for ever in dialogue from transitory, momentary and ephemeral standpoints.
   To experience the Same is to experience historicity as Geschicklichkeit, the finite
   destinality of every historical/epochal situation (ibid.: ).

    Andenken is the dialogue with the tradition, but it is the special kind of
dialogue in which the Same is experienced. The Same is the transcendent
point that traverses history and never changes. The Same that remains
unthought is the fact that Being happens as Geschick, and thus re–collection
is the experience that reveals the impossibility of a strong experience of
Being. Re–collection is the insight into the weakness of Being: If Being
only happens as Geschick, there is no experience of Being outside of the
historico–cultural horizon of Dasein. Every historical situation is thus an
expression of the Seinsgeschick — the destinal deliverance of Being to man.
The experience of the Same, the self–withdrawal of Being in Geschick, is thus
the experience that a particular interpretation of the Überlieferung — even
though it convincingly explains the historical situation — is not a fixed
structure of Being, but merely a variation or Prägung of that residuum of
transcendence. In this way, the Same “can be ‘proved’ only by the very fact
of transmission” (Vattimo : ).
    According to Vattimo, contemporary hermeneutics must rid itself of the
ambition of reaching die Sache selbst; there is no external point of reference
which our interpretations must be adequate to, since the Same that gives
our historical constellation always withdraws and, hence, is never identical
to its concrete deliverances. Consequently, the hermeneutical task is a
nihilistic, non–subjectivistic production of interpretations that (re)produces
the weak structures of Being. The ‘truth–value’ of this hermeneutics is
entirely immanent to interpretation and consists in the explanatory force
of the produced interpretations, which are to be judged by their ability to
convince others.
    Furthermore, the hermeneutical task to articulate this historical insight
in the form of different interpretations is, according to Vattimo and Zabala,
“political in itself ” (V and Z : ). This claim rests on the
assumption that metaphysical realism serves to legitimate political conser-
vatism: “[M]etaphysically framed political systems hold that society must
direct itself according to truth (the existing paradigm), that is, in favor of
the strong against the weak” (ibid.: ). When metaphysical realism theore-
tically claims to explicate the objectively true description of the world, it,
practically, works “to conserve and leave unquestioned the established order
    Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


of the world” (ibid.: ). Nihilistic hermeneutics, on the contrary, contains
an “anarchic vein” that involves “not the absence of rules but of the unique
universal rule” (ibid.: ). If metaphysical realism justifies the existing world
order by describing it as the objectively true, nihilistic hermeneutics is
essentially political, insofar as it rejects any notion of objective truth. Thus,
it subverts and emancipates us from political domination.
    This is not the place to go into detail with Vattimo’s claim that meta-
physical realism is tantamount to political conservatism; it only serves to
illuminate, what Vattimo believes to be the emancipatory potential of her-
meneutics. The adjective ‘weak’ that accompanies his line of thought is,
on this account, not only a reference to the weakening of Being, but also a
designator for those, whom it seeks to liberate. Given that those in power,
the strong, have succeeded in developing a metaphysical legitimation of
their domination, nihilistic hermeneutics provides a theoretical justifica-
tion of the alternative interpretations of the weak “who are not satisfied
with the established principles imposed on them” (ibid.: ). Thus, weak
thought advocates a “tolerant society” freed from metaphysico–political
domination of realism “in which achievements will be determined by the
plurality of conversations with different linguistic communities” (ibid.: ).
Nihilistic hermeneutics is political insofar as it subverts political and meta-
physical dominance by freeing and empowering the alternate interpretations
of the weak.


. Inspired by Heidegger and Derrida, Caputo develops what he calls a radi-
cal or cold hermeneutics. His reflections on the situatedness of the human
being is largely similar to Vattimo’s distinction between the Überlieferung
and das Selbe: On the one hand, there is a concrete horizon given throu-
gh a particular disclosure of Being, and, on the other hand, Caputo insists
that this disclosure is itself ungrounded and just a particular expression of
the mystery of Being. The disclosure of Being, the Geschick, is relative and
processual. Being itself remains a “residuum of transcendence.”
    Caputo finds this hermeneutical difference in two different tendencies of
Heidegger’s thought. Firstly, he identifies an “onto–hermeneutical” Heideg-
ger, who seeks to “offer a competing Being/beings distinction” through a
nostalgic return to the time before metaphysics (C : ). This mo-
vement, however, is itself a metaphysical gesture, insofar as it seeks to pro-
vide the ultimate horizon for grasping Being. Thus, the onto–hermeneutical
Heidegger, who emphasizes a specific disclosure of Being, contradicts the
“meta–ontological” Heidegger, who refuses to put forward another name or
description for Being itself. Heidegger’s “horizonal–hermeneutical gesture
is meant to put its finger on what sustains (hält) and mainstains in subsi-
                                                                     Nostalgic Freilassen       


stence (nährt) all such [metaphysical] projects” (ibid.: ). Another way
of articulating the difference between onto–hermeneutics and meta–ontology,
corresponding to Überlieferung and das Selbe, is to say that hermeneutics
concerns itself, not with the concrete Geschick or Schickung, but the very fact
that Being happens as a Schicken, that is, Schicken as a process. This I take to
be the difference, often emphasized by Heidegger, between Wesen under-
stood verbally and Wesen understood substantially as essence (e.g. US: ;
GA : ) .
    Meta–ontology cannot be experienced as such, since it is essentially a
term for the self–withdrawal of Being. Meta–ontology must be mediated
through a horizonal experience in the same way as Vattimo seeks to “prove”
das Selbe through transmissions. Caputo’s hermeneutics seeks to “stick
with the original difficulty of life” (C : ) and to rid Dasein of
all illusions and comfort in order to make it ready for “the openness for
différance” (ibid.: ). Instead of understanding our own situation (as Vattimo
wants), Caputo wants us to destabilize this situation, to make us tremble in
discomfort.
    Here Caputo relies heavily on Derrida, whose deconstruction he reads
hermeneutically not as a “destructive criticism but [as] the releasing of
another reading” (ibid.: ). Radical hermeneutics destabilizes hermeneu-
tic situations by offering alternate readings or discourses. This is a way of
showing that there is no ultimate disclosure of Being, but rather a multi-
plicity of possible ways for Being to take shape. This is evident even in his
reading of Heidegger, where he follows Derrida’s critique of “Heidegger’s
‘nostalgia’ and ‘the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, a lost
or native country of thought’” (ibid.: ; see also the epigraph in C
). Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger aims a blow at Heidegger’s
(rightist) tendency for nostalgia and search for a firm origin in order to free
Heidegger’s (leftist) refusal to reduce Being to any single form. Caputo calls
this deconstructed figure for a demythologized Heidegger.
    The releasement of readings is a way to make room for a discursive play,
where no single interpretation is final or absolute. The meta–ontological
hermeneutics seeks

    the moment when one experiences the contingency of any historical configuration
    and one is alerted to a deeper movement, the movement of Ereignis/a–letheia. Then,
    and only then, does one appreciate the fragility and precariousness of the hold
    which conceptual–representational thinking has upon things. To take conceptual
    thinking seriously, to suppose it exempt from the play, is to suffer the illusion of

    . For a list of the used abbreviations of Heidegger’s work see the bibliography. When relevant
the page number of the German original will be separated from the page number of the English
translation with a /.
      Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


     con–cipere (capere), be–greifen, which thinks it has a hold on the play just when the
     play has a hold on it and which thinks that it can dominate texts, epochs, and
     mortals themselves (C : ).

    A consequence of différance is that conceptual thinking is merely a form
of metaphysics. Instead, hermeneneutics reveals everything to be interpreta-
tions that are caught in the infinite play of meaning. The response to this
insight is to accept that interpretations are always historically contingent
and see an emancipatory potential in the production of alternate readings
and discourses. This setting–free, however, can only happen from a certain
hermeneutical situation, i.e., a particular horizon, and can therefore only
happen as an “inside job.”
    Certain interpretations and discourses form institutions or hegemonies;
they become dominant and determine the way one can participate in certain
fields. Hegemonic interpretations delimit and shut down the field of play
by establishing firm rules of conduct. The task of radical hermeneutics is
to infiltrate these institutions, to exercise a “double agency” and to assume
“the role of a treacherous and wily Hermes who subverts” (ibid.: ) .
Caputo calls this an ethics of dissemination:

     The function of an ethics of dissemination is not to try to level all institutional
     arrangements or discourage the formation of new ones — we have seen Derrida’s
     interest in the university — but to intervene in ongoing processes, to keep institu-
     tions in process, to keep the forms of life from eliminating the life–form they are
     supposed to house. It means to disrupt hardened shells, to practice the Socratic art,
     to be a gadfly and sting ray — but always in the polis (ibid.: ).

    The difficulty of life that Caputo seeks to reestablish thus undermines a
person’s own dwelling by suspecting that every form of comfort is merely
a disguised form of power. This is why cold hermeneutics — hermeneu-
tics without comfort, without a proper dwelling — is another term for
Caputo’s radical hermeneutics. In this way, radical hermeneutics seeks
to establish and maintain itself in–between the institutionalized, traditional
interpretations and discourses, on the one hand, and the production of new
interpretations, on the other. It is a continuous setting–free of discourses
(and not an attempt to set one particular interpretation free in order to
establish a new hegemony). In an attempt to maintain or prolong the expe-
rience of the mystery of Being and the free play of interpretations, radical
hermeneutics “does not lead us back to safe shores and terra firma; it leaves
us twisting slowly in the wind. It leaves us exposed and without grounds”
(ibid.: ).

     . I will get back to the figure of the double agent in section .
                                                       Nostalgic Freilassen   


. By now it should be clear that both Caputo and Vattimo base their herme-
neutics heavily on Heidegger and the emphasis on Geschick developed in his
late writings. Furthermore, they both believe that emancipatory hermeneu-
tics is possible only after rescuing Heidegger from himself and from his own
nostalgia in particular. Thus, Vattimo writes in The Adventure of Difference
that there is “no sense” in responding to Gestell by “dreaming of an idyllic
existence modelled on some imaginary Black Forest peasant or shepherd”
(V : ) and that we must “discard all nostalgia” in order to “iden-
tify with the destiny of the deployed domination of technology” (ibid.: ).
Caputo, as we have already seen, makes a similar dismissal of Heidegger’s
nostalgia making it the primary target for his demythologization, insofar as
he takes it to be a metaphysical attempt to counter Gestell with a competing,
strong description of the structure of Being.
    This harsh judgment of nostalgia relies on the distinction between a
leftist Heidegger, whose strict anti–subjectivism and anti–foundationalism is
the common ground between the hermeneutics of Vattimo and Caputo, and
a rightist Heidegger, who contradicted his own insistence on the event–like
nature of Being by putting forth a foundationalist eschatology that sought to
return to the full presence of Being experienced by the Greeks (cfr. V
: ; V : ; C : –). In this way, the strategic
attunement with which Heidegger tried to oppose Gestell is vigorously
dismissed as mythic, foundationalist, and politically dangerous.
    I wish to suggest another reading of Heidegger’s late hermeneutics that
challenges this clear–cut distinction between the good and the bad Heideg-
ger. After the recent publications of Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte from the
’s and ’s, in which Heidegger aligns his thinking of the history of Being
with cultural anti–Semitism and expresses his continued sympathies with
the National Socialist movement, this debate concerning the emancipatory
promises and limitations of Heidegger’s thought is more relevant than ever.
This, however, is not the place to review the vast amount of secondary
literature on Heidegger’s Nazism, nor is it the place to comment on the
content of Heidegger’s notebooks. In light of this debate, I merely suggest
that Heidegger’s nostalgia is not to blame and that this way of drawing the
line between the good and the bad Heidegger is flawed and, consequen-
tly, misleading for any attempt to seriously consider the relation between
Heidegger’s philosophy and politics. To conflate Heidegger’s fondness of
Hölderlin and the Greeks with his National Socialism is, I believe, based
on superficial readings of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought. Instead,
we must take seriously Heidegger’s own suggestion that the error of the
’s and ’s was not related to nostalgia, but the way that he aligned his
thinking with the metaphysics of the will. To dismiss the hermeneutic work
so often neglected as nostalgic, is, I believe, to throw the baby out with the
       Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


bath water. Hence, I propose the thesis that Heidegger’s nostalgia is, in fact,
an expression of the emancipatory, hermeneutic potential that his thinking
offers — despite his political stupidity.
    The argument for this thesis will go as follows: Firstly, I argue that
the distinction between a left– and a right–Heidegger is problematized
by the affectivity underlying Heidegger’s notion of language, Geschick and
Be–stimmung, since attunements (Stimmungen) are essential to the herme-
neutical situation and the hermeneutic work. This means that nostalgia
is not to be conceived as a strong metaphysical claim, but, rather, as a
world–disclosing Stimmung. Secondly, the hermeneutic work at play in this
way of understanding nostalgia is an attempt to set us free from the techno-
logical will to will that characterizes Gestell. For Heidegger the emancipatory
potential of hermeneutics is, qua his strict anti–subjectivism, not an empo-
werment of a subject, but entirely opposed to the category and metaphysics
of the will. Nostalgia, insofar as it is understood not as a willful, metaphysi-
cal longing for the full presence of Being, but as a world–disclosing attune-
ment, is, rather, a mode of experience. As such, it falls under the emancipatory
hermeneutic work that Heidegger designates with the term Gelassenheit .

. The affectivity inherent to Heidegger’s understanding of Geschick and
language is a primordial belonging that determines our world–disclosing
horizons. The hermeneutic task is to (cor)respond to this belonging, and
this is what Heidegger calls the original conversation or dialogue:
     the original conversation [das ursprüngliche Gespräch] . . . is the ever wordless address
     of what is sent to us [der stets wörterlose Zuspruch des Zugeschickten], the silent voice
     of the greeting, in which there comes to pass the demand of that which someone
     must first bear in his heart, and be determined by this voice to be the one who
     points [der durch die Stimme zum Zeigen bestimmt ist]. To stand under such a claim
     means to be able to hear [hören können]. That is the essential ground of genuine
     saying [des echten Sagens]. Saying is originally a hearing [Hörenkönnen], just as a
     genuine ability to hear is an original re–saying (not a mere mechanical repetition)
     of what has been heard (GA : /).

    In the originary dialogue, language addresses or greets us. A greeting
is an address from a distance, an address from somewhere else. Language
addresses and encourages us (spricht zu), which means that humans receive
something from language. Only this greeting itself is handed over to us,
while whatever greets remains at a distance; we only receive the greeting,
but not whatever greets itself. To borrow some phrases from Vattimo,
greeting implies a self–withdrawing handing–over.
    Language delivers our horizon to us, and this deliverance places us under
a demand (Zumutung). Heidegger identifies this demand with the ability to
                                                                    Nostalgic Freilassen      


listen. Since the listening to language is simultaneously our belonging to
language, this belonging itself becomes a task, to which we must respond.
The task for hermeneutics, then, das echte Hörenkönnen, is to articulate or
repeat (wiedersagen) the insight that we belong affectively to language.
    We can sum up the model of affectivity implied here in the following ele-
ments: () language is world–disclosing, () language and world–disclosure
are handed–over to us from elsewhere, and () hermeneutic work mu-
st reflect this affectivity, i.e., speak from out of this affective relationship .
Phenomenologically, to listen–to and to be affected–by in the sense of a
world–disclosure can be described as an attunement, Stimmung. Heidegger
puts this concisely in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, where he writes:
   Attunements are the fundamental ways in which we find ourselves disposed in
   such and such a way. Attunements are the how [Wie] according to which one is in
   such and such a way. Certainly we often take this ’one is in such and such a way’ . . .
   as something indifferent, in contrast to what we intend to do, what we are occupied
   with, or what will happen to us. And yet this ’one is in such and such a way’ is
   not — is never — simply a consequence or side–effect of our thinking, doing, and
   acting [Denkens, Tuns und Lassens]. It is — to put it crudely — the presupposition
   for such things, the ’medium’ within which they first happen (GA –: /f ).

    Attunement is thus another word for the way that we find ourselves
always already belonging to a world that pre–reflectively has been disclosed
in a certain manner, that is, in which things appear in a certain light and
in which certain possibilities makes themselves known to us. Our belon-
ging/listening–to takes the form of attunements. Zugehörigkeit attunes (be-
stimmt) us, and this is what discloses the world . The concept of attunement
is thus central to the model of affectivity insofar as it is world–disclosing,
implies a distance from what attunes, and makes a responsive, qua attuned,
hermeneutic work possible.
    Caputo and Vattimo do indeed reflect this movement on a formal level,
when they argue in favour of the weakening of Being as it follows from the
un–grounding Heideggerian meta–ontology, where Being manifests itself
in different and unpredictable ways because of its self–withdrawal. They
fail, however, to take the full consequence of this originary affectivity, when
they dismiss the attunement of Heidegger’s own position. Nostalgia is not
a metaphysical claim for presence, but rather an attuned response to the
hermeneutic situation.
    Nostalgia is a longing for something else and even though it, hypothe-
tically, might be a longing for a time before metaphysics, where Being
    . In the same way as Heidegger refuses to speak about [über] language in order to speak from
out of [von] language. (US: )
    . “Understanding is always attuned” as he writes in Sein und Zeit. (SZ: )
     Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


was fully graspable, we must understand it not as the strong theoretical
claim that this absolute relation to Being is actually possible, but, rather, as
a Stimmung. In this interpretation of nostalgia the longing for a particular
belonging is something that characterizes a specific hermeneutic position.
Caputo is wrong when he rejects it as theoretically unsound, as internally
contradictory and as politically dangerous. When we understand nostalgia
as nostalgia, that is, as something that longs for an impossible nearness, we
must see this Stimmung as part of the hermeneutic affectivity. Nostalgia is
a Stimmung brought about by the hermeneutic position, and as such the
longing for a closer belonging is part of a historical belonging.
    We find another explication of nostalgia as nostalgia in Jeff Malpas’ di-
stinction between nostalgia and mythophilia. Malpas writes that nostalgia
“involves both the spatial and the temporal, both memorial recovery and
loss, both a sense of home and of estrangement” (M : ). The
difference between nostalgia and mythophilia, then, is that nostalgia is
essentially self–referential (ibid.: ), insofar as it requires a homecoming
and an estrangement. Nostalgia knows that the home (nostos) it discloses is
impossible and already lost. Thus, it knows the tension in and differentiated
nature of its longing and involves pain or homesickness (algos). Mythophilia,
on the other hand, “lacks any sense of pain, of algos, but strictly speaking al-
so lacks any proper sense of home, of nostos, since it lacks any sense . . . that
what is at issue is its own sense of itself, its own sense of identity” (ibid.: ).
In other words, mythophilia lacks knowledge about its distance to Being,
and it believes itself to be capable of actually separating itself from its own
conditions in order to return to its imagined utopia. The self–referentiality
of nostalgia, on the other hand, reflects its own hermeneutical situation and
its distance to Being. Nostalgia is a homecoming and an estrangement in the
sense that it contrasts its painful condition in e.g. the Gestell of Heidegger’s
modernity, with a longing for a different (say, Greek) relation to Being. It
does not, however, forget this contrast or tension inherent in its longing.
    If it is conceived as an attunement, nostalgia cannot be the sort of foun-
dationalism that Vattimo and Caputo believes it to be, since it through
self–referentiality presupposes a distance from Being. As a Stimmung, nostal-
gia is merely a particular form of world–disclosure, a deliverance from the
perpetual self–withdrawal of Being. Thus, Left– and Right–Heidegger are
intermingled: Right–Heidegger, whose nostalgia Caputo and Vattimo are
quick to dismiss as metaphysical, presents a Stimmung made possible by the
ontological, non–foundationalist affectivity illuminated by Left–Heidegger.
    Nostalgia is in this way a modern expression of Andenken. Thinking
nostalgia as nostalgia illuminates the hermeneutical position in which so-
mething at a distance determines our being–in–the–world. The very fact
that we long for the good old days, where everything was as it should be,
                                                                     Nostalgic Freilassen       


reveals to us that we are not in control of our being–in–the–world and
that our dwelling is originarily affective and thus conditioned by alterity. In
Heideggerian hermeneutics, then, we cannot dismiss moods, dispositions
and attunements as unsound. Rather, they must be understood as part of
the belonging to Being. In the case of nostalgia, it is clear that Heidegger’s
longing is already part of his belonging to Gestell — and thus not something
to be dismissed in favour of a full identification with the domination of
technology.


. Earlier we saw that Heidegger called the relation to language for “the
ever wordless address of what is sent to us [der stets wörterlose Zuspruch des
Zugeschickten]” My emphasis on Zugeschickten points out that this model
of affectivity underlies not only Heidegger’s conception of language but also
history, Geschick. In their anti–subjectivist treating of Geschick as deliverance
and transmission, Caputo and Vattimo clearly see that Being sends messages
to the human without itself being fully transparent or comprehensible. The
asymmetry of this hermeneutical affectivity implies that we can never fully
understand Being, and that no ultimate horizon is possible.
    That this asymmetry is at work, whether we realize it or not, might
sound disheartening, but Heidegger does indeed believe it to contain an
emancipatory potential. This is not in the usual sense of a subjectivist em-
powering, but as a Wesensbestimmung, an essential determination, that sets
something free in its own essence, “etwas in sein eigenes Wesen freilas-
sen” (GA : ). In the light of an essential affectivity, the hermeneutical
task is a letting–be or setting–free of something according to its own essence.
Another way of putting this is to say that the human can reposition itself
in — but not radically alter — its relation to Being by letting this relation be.
This change, however small, allows us to view our way of belonging to lan-
guage from a (slightly) less alienating perspective: The human (nominative
case) lets Being (accusative case) determine us (dative case) (in the sense of
be–stimmen). The rest of this article will unfold this relation by articulating
what kind of response allows such repositioning, and by emphasizing in
what sense this kind of hermeneutic work can be liberating .
    The (apparent) passivity inherent in these formulations reflects the vo-
cabulary of the late Heidegger, whose writings are filled with examples of
Dasein letting (lassen), lingering (weilen) and waiting (warten). Heidegger
even says that Being uses (braucht) man. To understand this figure requires

    . Ruin () shows that the transition from the early account of willing to the late emphasis
on Gelassenheit is still philosophically concerned with freedom, despite the fact that Heidegger is
no longer explicit about it. One might say that Heidegger no longer wishes to speak about [über]
freedom, but wishes to speak from out of [von] freedom.
       Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


a closer look at Heidegger’s characterization of metaphysics as Gestell. He
develops the thesis that Gestell is the essence of technology in the sense of a
disclosure of Being through his readings of Nietzsche, “the last metaphy-
sician.” It is in this link that the explanation of the term Freilassen must be
found .
    In a description of the relation between Nietzsche and Heidegger’s
notion of metaphysics, Bret Davis writes:

     Heidegger does not simply discredit Nietzsche’s delimitation of being as the will to
     power; on the contrary, he affirms the truth of Nietzsche’s thought, but with one
     crucial qualification: being is determined as (i.e., reveals/conceals itself as) the will
     to power only at a culminating stage of the epochal history of metaphysics (D
     : ).

   This means that Heidegger does not criticize Nietzsche for being inaccu-
rate in his description of the will to power. Rather, Heidegger takes it to be
the perfect description of the disclosure of Being in that particular epoch. As
such, it is the predecessor to the domination of technology. This is evident
from the way that Heidegger’s description of the will to power already
draws on the various forms of stellen that will later reemerge as Ge–stell and
the fact that the will to power already discloses Being as a standing reserve
(Bestand):

     To preserve the levels of power which the will has attained at particular times
     requires that the will surround itself with that [mit einem Umkreis von solchem umgibt]
     which it can reliably and at any time fall back on and from which its security
     is to be guaranteed. These surroundings enclose the enduring existence, at the
     immediate disposal of the will, of that which presences [unmittelbar verfügbaren
     Bestand an Anwesendem] . . . . This enduringness [Beständige] is however turned into
     a permanence [Ständigen], i.e., into that which is [steht] constantly at one’s disposal
     [Verfügung], only by its being brought to stand by having set it in place [Stellen
     zum Stand]. This placing [Stellen] has the nature of a production [Herstellens] that
     re–presents [vor–stellenden] (GA : /).

   When the will to power is a disclosure of Being, our surroundings (Um-
kreis) are seen, not as independent things, but as objects that are at our
disposal (Verfügung). This way of representing (Vorstellen) the world, disclo-
ses it as something that is there for the sole purpose of human manipulation

      . The terms Gelassenheit and letting–be do appear in Heidegger’s earlier writings, but here they
mean something entirely different. According to Guignon, the passivity of the terms designate a
“powerless” consideration of one’s own limitation and finitude that serves to enable an “empower-
ment” in the form of “the ability to make meaningful choices” (Guignon : ). This form of
letting–be is thus primarily understood from the perspective of Dasein’s care–structure. In the later
writings, this will be seen as insufficient because of its proximity to subjectivism and its reliance on
the metaphysics of the will.
                                                            Nostalgic Freilassen      


and production (Herstellen). The world is thus a “standing reserve” (Bestand)
waiting for us to call it forth to be consumed and manipulated (GA : ).
It merely waits for us to order (bestellen) it — as in a giant warehouse. Gestell
— a term for the connection between Vorstelllen, Bestellen and Herstellen —
is thus a result of the domination of the will (cfr. GA : ).
    This means that Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics is not merely a cri-
tique of technology, Being as presence or the forgetting of the ontological
difference. As Davis convincingly argues, Heidegger’s critique of metaphy-
sics is, furthermore, a critique of the metaphysics of the will. Technology,
then, is merely a continuation of Nietzsche’s will to power with the only,
but crucial, addition that the human is not the firm basis for the willful
disclosure of the world, but, rather, incorporated into the technological will
to will and made into a human resource (Menschenmaterial) through what
Heidegger calls “cybernetics” (D : ff ).
    The will is metaphysical, insofar as it reduces the world (ultimately,
including humans) to a constant reserve. Hermeneutics — whose primary
function is to counter the grasp that metaphysics has on our understanding
— must try to find a way out of the domain of the will. Freilassen and
the related term Gelassenheit (often translated as releasement) are to be
understood in this context. This is pointed out in “Zur Erörterrung der
Gelassenheit,” where Heidegger in the form of a dialogue writes:

   Scientist: Then releasement [Gelassenheit] lies — if we may use the word lie —
   beyond the distinction between activity and passivity. . .
   Scholar: . . . because releasement does not belong to the domain of the will (G:
   /).


   Gelassenheit is a term supposed to point beyond the historical–cultural
horizons given in particular deliverances of Geschick and thus to bring
to attention the affective relation between human and Being. Gelassenheit
points towards the realm that gives these particular horizons. With an old
word for region, Heidegger calls it die Gegend: „Strictly speaking, a region
for everything is not one region among many, but the region of all regions
[die Gegend aller Gegenden]” (G: /, my emphasis). Die Gegend is the
open realm in which Being happens, i.e., in which something comes towards
us (uns entgegenkommt). Die Gegend is the event–like nature of Being that
renders strong structures of Being — i.e., the identification between a
particular horizon and the “region of all regions” — impossible.
   The point of Gelassenheit, then, and its reliance on the term lassen (let-
ting) is that die Gegend cannot be illuminated by an act of willing, because
willing relies on the very metaphysics that die Gegend seeks to undo. Thus,
Heidegger emphasizes on several occasions in the dialogue the opposition
       Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


between the hermeneutics of Gelassenheit and the will, e.g. “[w]hen we
let ourselves into releasement to that–which–regions [die Gelassenheit zur
Gegnet], we will non–willing [das Nicht–Wollen]” and “[w]e are to do nothing
but wait” (G: /, /). It is crucial to note, however, that Heidegger’s
call for a “Nicht–Wollen” is not a mere renunciation, denial or negation of
the will that results in a kind of passivity. The dichotomy between activity
and passivity is entirely within the domain of the will. On the contrary,
when he says that all we can do is to wait, Heidegger aims at something
that lies before this dichotomy.
    Admittedly, Heidegger’s thought is difficult to follow at this point, but a
remark from the protocol to Heidegger’s famous lecture “Zeit und Sein”
might clear things up a bit. In what can be understood as an elaboration of
this sort of non–willing, Heidegger says that his usage of “lassen” relates to
the term “Anwesen–Lassen”, letting–presence, which must not be understood
metaphysically as a letting something (i.e. a being) become present, but rather a
letting be of presence itself (GA : ). Gelassenheit is a way of letting presencing
itself be and not just a particular being. This entails that the repositioning
that Heidegger’s hermeneutics calls for remains within the realm of presence,
Anwesen, and thus within experience, Erfahrung (GA : ) .
    This is the point Reiner Schürmann is getting at with his distinction
between “economies of presence” and “the event of presencing” (Schür-
mann : ). The former designates the “aletheiological constellation”
of a given epoch, i.e., the ordering and disclosure of beings at a given time,
while the latter is an expression of die Gegend that cannot be reduced to such
a constellation. Dasein, however, is essentially bound to (that is, belongs to)
such a horizon, which is why Heidegger needs a way of ‘pointing towards’
die Gegend from inside an epochal constellation. Heidegger, then, is in need
of a method in order to illuminate this place where Being happens, and
this is what is at stake in his engagement with the philosophical and lyrical
tradition. Schürmann describes it as a “deconstruction” of the economies
of presence and explains that Heidegger’s

     interpretations do not in the least intend to lead us back to some Greek golden age
     beyond an alleged metaphysical interlude. . . The modalities of presence are unfolded
     from the fold where we people of the twentieth century are lodged (ibid.: f).

  The interpretations of the Greeks, Hölderlin, etc. are not strong meta-
physical claims but attempts to show the affective relation between human

     . This comes as no surprise, since the quote from Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik already stated:
“[T]his ’one is in such and such a way’ is not — is never — simply a consequence or side–effect of our
thinking, doing, and acting [Denkens, Tuns und Lassens]. It is — to put it crudely — the presupposition for
such things.” (GA –: /f, my emphasis)
                                                       Nostalgic Freilassen   


and Being by bringing to attention that Being has been disclosed differently
throughout history. Heidegger’s alleged anti–modernism then is an attempt
to unfold a different ‘modality of presence’ or, as I prefer to put it, mode of
experience (Erfahrung).
    The terms Freilassen and Gelassenheit are emancipatory in the sense that
they designate a setting–free of experience. This is how Heidegger proposes
an emancipation beyond empowerment, since the categories of experience and
presencing are prior to the notions of acting and willing. Hence it sounds
rather strange to speak of experience in terms of activity/passivity. Instead,
and this is the way that Being needs and uses man, Dasein cor–responds to
Being through its experience. To correspond to die Gegend (the distance
to the self–withdrawal of Being) and not just the epochal constellation of
Gestell requires an openness to different modes of experience, and this I take
to be the sole aim of Heidegger’s hermeneutics. In a certain sense, it can be
seen as a continuation of the “destruction” proclaimed by the early Heideg-
ger aimed at the understanding of Being as the beingness of what is present
(Anwesenden). Different modes of experience call for a more nuanced notion
of presence or nearness (Nähe). This is why Heidegger in the end of the text
on Gelassenheit summarizes it through Heraclitus’ single word fragment an-
chibasie, which he translates as “In–die–Nähe–gehen,” going–into–nearness.
This is a term for the essence of thinking that Heidegger tries to advocate,
and it is inspired by another summarizing sentence: “That–which–regions
[Die Gegnet] itself would be the nearness of distance [die Nähe der Ferne]
and the distance of nearness [die Ferne der Nähe]” (G: /). Contrary to
Gestell, which discloses beings as a constant reserve (as something beständig)
and limits what is real to the constant presence of what is at our disposal,
Heidegger wishes to show how the remote (that is not at our disposal) is. By
opening other modes of experience Heidegger challenges the metaphysics
of the will by showing that there are things, which are not merely objects for
our manipulation and consummation.
    If my understanding of Heidegger’s non–willing and the emancipation
of experience is correct, we arrive at a deeper understanding of the problem
with the postmodern critique and development of his hermeneutics. The
distinction between a non–foundationalist Left–Heidegger and a founda-
tionalist Right–Heidegger relies on the misinterpretation that Heidegger
actually wants to return to the Greeks. Thus, it fails to take his Nicht–Wollen
into account. The same problem arises when we consider the political di-
mension of the postmodern hermeneutics: Here, hermeneutics is employed
in order to enable philosophy to counter either discursive hegemonies (Ca-
puto) or the conservatism of politico–metaphysical realism (Vattimo). Thus,
it remains within the metaphysics of the will.
    Caputo’s terminology, prima facie, offers some resistance to this interpre-
      Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


tation, since he explicitly aligns his “ethics of dissemination” with the term
Gelassenheit (C : ff ). For Caputo, Gelassenheit means the play
of interpretations that will solidify into a hegemony when put into system,
and thus, as we saw earlier, the task of the hermeneutic ‘double–agent’ is
to infiltrate an institution or discourse in order to free other interpretations
from within. Caputo’s figure of the double agent, however, reveals that his
notion of Gelassenheit in no way resembles Heidegger’s Nicht–Wollen. The
double agent is, literally, not exempt from willing, but rather bound up in a
play between two greater instances of willing. He seeks to do the bidding of
a foreign agency and thus operates with a hidden agenda. In Caputo’s case
the double agent is — admittedly — not loyal to a particular foreign agency,
but seeks rather to align himself with whoever is not in charge. This, however,
does not amount to a Nicht–Wollen, but rather a form a renegade double
agency that supports any will except the dominating. Instead of escaping the
metaphysics of the will, Caputo’s double agent is loyal to willing as such .
    Likewise, Vattimo and Zabala do not imagine the hermeneutic emanci-
pation in the form of a Nicht–Wollen. Their weakening of Marx, for example,
designates a weak and spectral communism without scientific claims and
without the strong dominion and monopoly of truth seen in the Soviet
Union (Vattimo and Zabala : ). Thus, they reinterpret the communi-
stic promise of a society “without classes” as a society “without dominion”
(ibid.: ). The political consequence of nihilistic hermeneutics is thus
clearly an attempt to subvert the dominating power or will of a society that
seeks to exchange the one unique truth with a “plurality of conversations”
(ibid.: ). As such this kind of weak thought implies an empowerment of
marginalized groups.
    The politics of postmodern hermeneutics, then, can be encapsulated by
the formulation that it does not want Non–Willing, as Heidegger did, but
rather the particularization of the (dominating) Will. This difference is cru-
cial for the assessment of how to read Heidegger’s nostalgia. If we operate
within the metaphysics of the will, nostalgia will appear as a dangerous,
political anti–modernism that run–counter to any attempts of pluralizing
our society by allowing more discourses to appear. If, however, as I have
argued in this paper following Davis and Schürmann, we understand the
metaphysics of the will to be part of what must be countered, nostalgia is
— when understood as nostalgia — liberating insofar as it seeks to set free a
different mode of experience, which might just bring about a glimpse of
die Gegend.
     . Furthermore, Davis argues — based on Caputo’s reading of Meister Eckhart’s Gelassenheit
that positions it well inside Christian orthodoxy — that Caputo falls back into not only an “ontology
of presence but also into a theology of will,” when he suggests that the point of Gelassenheit is to
identify oneself with the (transcendent) will of God. (D : n)
                                                        Nostalgic Freilassen   


    Nostalgia is in this sense, contrary to mythophilia, an example of the
kind of hermeneutic work, where our conception of the world is nuanced
through multiple modes of experience. It is not a willfull metaphysical
longing for the full presence of Being, but a world–disclosing attunement.
Borrowing phrases from Davis’ reading of the German Umstimmung (D
: ), we can say that Heidegger’s engagement with the past, his so
called ‘anti–modernism’ and his nostalgia are not an attempt to return, but
to retune. The affective hermeneutics seeks — through readings, discussions
and contrasts — to retune our understanding and show (rather than merely
talk about) that different modes of experience are possible. What it sets free
is thus not a willful subject striving for power, but rather experience itself.
By setting experience free, the affective hermeneutics allows things and
worlds that are excluded by Gestell to be.


. If we consider the affectivity that underlies the late Heidegger’s notions of
language and history by emphasizing the intrinsic link between our herme-
neutical belongingness (Zugehörigkeit) and our attunements (Stimmungen),
any postmodern attempts to save Heidegger from himself by making a di-
stinction between his progressive non–foundationalism and his reactionary,
nostalgic foundationalism seem rather odd. If attunements (as Heidegger
implies) are essential to hermeneutics, it cannot be right that we must
rigorously dismiss the attunement of Heidegger’s own writing.
    Against such attempts I argue that Heidegger’s nostalgia is in fact an
expression of the emancipatory potential of his hermeneutics. As an at-
tunement, nostalgia must not be understood as a willfull, metaphysical
longing for the full presence of Being, but as a world–disclosing mode of
experience. As such, it falls under the hermeneutic work that Heidegger
designates with the terms Freilassen and Gelassenheit. These terms, I suggest,
indicate a hermeneutic attempt to set experience free from the grasp of
metaphysics, which, according to Heidegger, includes the domain of the
will, since willing (as a world–disclosure) merely posits beings as objects
for manipulation.
    As I shown with Vattimo and Caputo, weak thought correctly and
importantly refuses to identify Being with any particular horizon because of
the ontological affectivity between Being and man. I believe, however, that
weak thought should be made even weaker. It should not merely oppose
itself to objectivity, universality and truth, but also the will. This means
that the possibility of an emancipatory hermeneutics does not rely on the
empowerment of a subject, but, rather, on an openness to affects; not on
a stronger or higher notion of will, but on a heightened disposition to let
things be and receive what is given by Being. What is usually considered
     Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen


a reactionary nostalgia in the late Heidegger, must be reinterpreted as a
hermeneutical work that seeks to set attunements free — and thus to make
different modes of world–disclosure possible.


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