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This is a diagram of Harman’s analysis of The Fourfold in Heidegger’s philosophy, as set up in the essay on the jug (the Nietzschean terms are correlated to Heidegger’s study of Nietzsche, and not Nietzsche’s work itself). It comes with this commentary (Heidegger Explained, 133-4):

It is actually not so difficult to discover which two dualisms are in play here. One opposition recurs throughout Heidegger’s philosophy so repetitively that it often seems like the only idea he ever had: the distinction between a thing’s shadowy concealment and its explicit appearance. This is also known as the temporal interplay between past and future, or between the equipment that silently functions and the signs and broken equipment that show themselves “as” what they are. Even in the fourfold of 1949, it is quite easy to split up the terms along these lines. Ever since the essay on artworks in the 1930s, Heidegger used “earth” as a term for mysterious concealment that withdraws from all appearance. By contrast, “sky” is defined in terms of specific visible examples such as the cycling of the seasons and the course of the planets and stars.

It is just as easy to classify the other two terms. Heidegger tells us that “gods” are never visible, but merely hint, making it clear that gods belong with earth on the side of concealment. Meanwhile, “mortals” are defined as the ones capable of death as death, putting mortals on the side of clearing or revealing, due to the role of the explicit as-structure here. Mortals and sky, then, are terms of “future” or of the revealed realm, whereas earth and gods belong to “past” or the concealed realm.

This still leaves us with the burden of finding a second principle of opposition. Although somewhat trickier, this also turns out not to be so difficult. It hinges on the difference between the unity of a thing’s existence and the plurality of its essence or qualities. If we look at the concealed realm, we find that Heidegger always defines earth as a single, unified, sheltering force into which everything withdraws. Earth never has any parts for Heidegger, but is always one earth. By contrast, the gods are plural, and all of them hint individually.

If we now turn our attention to the cleared or revealed side of the world, sky (despite being singular in terms of grammar) is obviously a plural term, since unlike earth it is defined through numerous specific examples. By contrast, mortals are engaged with death, and we know from elsewhere in Heidegger’s writings that death or Angst reveals the world as a whole, and not a plurality of specific things.

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The Bridges

"The bridge swings over the stream 'with ease and power.' It does not just connect the banks that are already there... The bridge gathers the earth as a landscape around the stream. The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants mortals their way, so that they may come and go from shore to shore. The bridge gathers, as a passage that crosses, before the divinities--whether we explicitly think of, and visibly gives thanks for their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge, or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed wholly aside. The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals..."

Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking"

#The Bridges #The Fourfold #Landscape