Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;In this study I offer a reading of Heidegger through the theme of pain . To accord pain such a privileged role in an elucidation of Heidegger's thought appears at first glance to considerably overestimate its significance. To begin with, pain does not even explicitly appear as a term in Heidegger's "own" vocabulary until 1946 in the lecture Wozu Dichter? and does not appear in Sein und Zeit. In fact Heidegger seems to reserve the theme of pain for his most esoteric and demanding texts of the 1950s in which its few, fleeting appearances occur. To base a whole interpretative strategy therefore, upon such a theme seems to be a reckless procedure, a view apparently reflected in the fact that the notion of pain has been almost totally neglected by the legion of commentators on Heidegger's thought. Why, then, focus upon such an apparently tangential theme which Heidegger speaks of in a cryptic, and gnomic fashion? ;The principal reason for attempting to foreground the theme of pain in Heidegger's thought is my belief that, whilst its appearances are indeed few, it has a potency and ability to radicalise Heidegger's thought which is virtually unmatched by any other theme within his texts. In my view it is the theme of pain which most effectively sustains the subversive character of the "Sache des Denkens". I hope to demonstrate this claim in the following study. ;In order to explicate the role and significance of the theme of pain in Heidegger's thought I attempt to offer a close analysis of the texts in which it appears. Pain is one of several notions which are either introduced for the first time or which receive increased attention throughout the 1950s, a period in which Heidegger's path of thought is once again dramatically revivified, most obviously through the eclipse of many of the terms of his earlier vocabulary. In this phase of Heidegger's thought the question of being completes its migration to a meditation upon the nature of language and, characteristically, Heidegger turns to poetic discourse in order to let language disclose its nature and thereby being as such. It is in the course of this meditation that the significance of pain becomes manifest as Heidegger identifies it as the nature of language. This phase of Heidegger's thought culminates with the publication in 1959 of Unterwegs zur Sprache, a collection of texts written throughout the 1950s