Melanie,

While I'm no expert on Heidegger, I wrote a thesis on his work. This use of
H's Ereignis in comparison with Plotinus seems like quite a stretch. It's
hard to conceive such a comparison without distorting either philosopher, so
I wonder if Schurmann was using selective attention and exaggerating one
feature of 'appropriation' or 'enowning' (as it is translated by Emad and
Maly) or 'event of appropriation' (as translated by Stambaugh when hypenated
as Er-eignis), such as its dynamic rather than static nature (if so why
choose Ereignis over other dynamic Heidegger's concepts?)
Ereignis is a word Heidegger chose to avoid what he considered typical
metaphysical language to describe the apportionment of Being, which is a
relationship (this is not a word he would use) between being and the human
being. Da-sein, the human being or thinker can be (not 'is' but can be) the
situated being at the center of this temporal and historical activity. The
human being (as I argued in my thesis, the authentic Dasein) acts, through
thinking, as the opening by which Being is revealed in "truth." He
mythical calls this relating in Ereignis that of the fourfold, earth sky man
and gods. Da-sein is the
between that effects this relating. This 'concept' cannot be understood
without acknowledging that it was born from his confrontation with nihilism,
and what he saw as the disintegration or loss of "being" manifest in the
loss of greatness of the human being. At the point of introducing Ereignis,
Heidegger is not concerned with everyday Dasein, or any average human being,
but with "the few and the rare." To discuss the meaning of Ereignis further
really falls out of the scope of Neoplatonism and discussion of mystical
experiences. I understand that late Heidegger is often characterized as
'mystical' - but this is usually because people fail to understand his
language then impose any interpretative device (such as comparative
studies), or they consider his early interest in Duns Scotus and Eckhart as
the main basis of interpretion of his work, or they did not have access to
the development of his language in his 'private' works of the 30's, such as
Beitraege, which (by his request) was not published in German until 1989,
and translated in English in 1999, His1962 essay, "Time and Being" for
instance makes little sense without going back to his introduction of
Ereignis in the 30's.

I just can't imagine Heidegger as a key to understanding Plotinus.

So the question for the Plotinus experts who would want to look at such a
comparison would be, where does the human being, particularly the thinkers
and the poets, fit in with Plotinus' One? For middle and late Heidegger,
they are "creators and grounders of the abyss" - loosely meaning that the
authentic, faced with the end of metaphysics and the flight of "the last
god", must acknowledge and confront nihilism to retrieve meaning (not by
overcoming thought of as leaping over or a flight upward or some such - nor
by Nietzschean will to power) which on a grand scale is the the enactment
of a new beginning. are they historical and temporal beings?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Melanie Brawn Mineo" <mineom@...>

Indeed, this commentary is to what Schurmann was referring. His point
is that the "later Heidegger is useful for understanding Plotinus.
Indeed, one can identify a line of authors whose thinking has remained
on the margins of metaphysics precisely because they attempted to
retrieve a 'verbal,' non-substantialist, understanding of being. This
line would go from Plotinus' 'unification' to Meister Eckhart's
'ground,' to Schelling's 'longing' in all beings to break out of
darkness into manifestation, to Heidegger's Ereignis" (N&N, 164). M

"Often, too, the sounding of one string awakens what might pass for a
perception in another, the result of their being in harmony and tuned
to one musical scale."-Enneads IV.4.41