Heidegger and the requirements of the thought of being: the concept of Geviert

Abstract

The thought of Heidegger revolves around a single object: to think being. The movement of his speculation can be defined according to certain leading terms, which express the way in which being must be thought. One of these terms is Geviert. To understand the content of Geviert in the context of Heidegger’s thought, one must start from his critique of the representationist thought which characterizes western metaphysics. To think being as Geviert means not to objectivize it, but to think it in the interrelatedness of sky and earth, mortals and gods. The pair “sky-earth” indicates being’s dimension of hiddenness and disclosure. “Mortals” bespeaks the reference of being to man, “gods” its givenness. From the analysis of Geviert we may conclude that Heidegger thinks being as meaning, whereas perhaps it would be necessary to broaden the point of view from which to think being, so as to reach a more complete comprehension of it.