PHENOMENOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS OF EVENTS

Abstract

This paper advances a realist interpretation of the late Heidegger’s philosophy of being as event. My central claim is that Heidegger’s understanding of the event of openness undergoes a decisive transformation in the 1930s and thereafter: What was originally conceived as an existential structure of Dasein (the event of transcendence) becomes progressively deanthropocentrized. The event of unconcealment is no longer confined to human existence but is instead approached as a universal, even cosmological, occurrence — something that takes place with beings themselves, independently of their relation to human beings. In this respect, I argue, Heidegger’s discourse of the event can be understood as a distinctive form of metaphysics: not a metaphysics of presence, but a metaphysics of the event. While this event-metaphysics already carries a realist inclination, it remains weakened in Heidegger by his continuing insistence on the indispensability of Dasein for the event. Drawing on Eugen Fink’s cosmological reworking of Heidegger’s later thought, I argue that this commitment is not necessary and that Heidegger’s conception of the event can instead be interpreted in a radically realist manner. In Fink’s cosmological perspective, the event
assumes the character of a fully subject-independent occurrence. Building on these developments, I propose a systematic generalization that, I argue, possesses systematic significance in its own right and can be pursued independently of Heideggerian or phenomenological scholarship. I conclude by sketching two possible directions for such a metaphysics: A speculative, monistic conception of the event as singular reality, and an empiricist conception of reality as a plurality of finite events of appearing. Both approaches, I contend, provide resources for integrating phenomenological insights into ongoing debates in contemporary theoretical philosophy.