Heidegger and Body: Krug, Ding and the elevation of sex to gnosis

In May 1950, Heioegger is writing to Arendt about distance and intimacy: this is the Venus letter.

In June 1950 Heidegger delivers a talk, Das Ding, in which he extends a talk originally delivered to a well-heeled private audience in Bremen.

The talk is rendered almost untranslatable due to its reliance on northern dialect: the term in question is Krug.

Heidegger is addressing the Fine Arts audience and he chooses the useful Krug and not the fine Greek amphora or other form.  Heidegger is not always averse to Kitsch, and the reader should know that a beer mug is also a Krug - a Bierkrug. We will ignore that one layer behind lies the Putsch and Krieg.

The Krug for the esteemed listener is that from which water poured over the feet of the apostles, that they might be washed. The Krug is that which was borne by the woman at the well, it is what is borne on the heads of women the world over.

But the Krug for the North Germans of Bremen is also the pub or inn - Schenke  - and now we have reached Mary and the trusting Joseph at the inn and the gift, Geschenk.

But more than that, Krug is the vessel with the neck, the col, and so we delve.

Krug will return in a poem of Celan, some two years later.

It is essential to know that 'womb' or utero - the ultimate locus of Geborgenheit - comes to us with a close connection to buc and bucket as the old leather water bucket would swell as it filled.  So we even return to wine skins, as will Heidegger in his talk, for the Krug is also the Weinkrug.

The published talk begins with what could be a citation from the letter to Arendt: distance which is not.

S. 167 gives us Das Keimen und Gedeihen der Gewächse (see my previous post on Heid. and eros)

The principal moments come in parallel verses, almost Hebraic in manner:

Das Geschenk des Gusses kann ein Trink sein.
Er gibt Wasser.
Er gibt Wein zu trinken. [S. 164]

Why "kann ... sein"?  If this does not bring the gushing labia [Schamlippen] to the mouth itself, then consider this:
What is so remarkable in his choice of "laben" as we have now returned also to "laver" and the washing of the feet.

Im Wasser das Geschenkes weilt die Quelle.
...
Er labt ihnen Durst. [laben - both to drink in and to feast upon but also to quicken as with life*]
Er erquickt ihre Muße

Das Ding is also the maiden. And we remember the scent that was in the house after Mary annointed His feet. This was the Magd and not a priestess.

But Heidegger can also be quite low-brow, and he moves on the gushing blood and the "Opfer" - the victim offered in sacrifice.

And deeper still:

Im Geschenk des Gusses weilt die Einfalt der Vier.

This is one of the more troubling passages in Heidegger: he returns to four, as he often does: and next will be four mirrors.  Place four mirrors in an intersection of Heaven and Earth, godly and mortal and we have the elements of the Hakenkeuz and not the Christian cross.  It is very likely his offering of the ancient Swastika.

Einfalt gives us both the innocence and also the folds and creases. We are back to the Tal on the mons veneris.  Heidegger knew how to keep his audience in thrall.  He will give us the Mondlauf and we will have mens one layer below his explicit ens.

I leave off with this before turning to sciences: astronomy and anatomy.

das Zwiefache Fassen
das Fassende
die Leere
die Ausgieß als Spenden

The Geschenke is indeed a Spende, but one layer below is the fountain that spends water - but we are also back to Keim, for man in German also spends his seed and must not do so on the ground, Erde. And Heidegger dwells on Erde without mention of die Frau.

The four which is barely suppressed as Geviert is gender + walten: father, mother, daughter, son (the Heideggers adopted Erika.)
Without these four, whence the shepherding of Being? Lamb are begotten, male and female. The key phrase is missing, as in: Sorgfalt walten lassen (but far from "prudence' or 'phronesis'.)

Gender is what cuts across all of the genera and species.  And gender brings us to Symposium.

Heidegger in the hands of Arendt has a focus on Galileo and astronomy.  But this is short-sighted.  Heidegger also had his sites set on anatomy.  What astronomy to had done to Heaven by violating Venus (exposing her phases), anatomy had done to body, Leib. The connection here is intimate in all respects: both the depiction of the anatomy lesson and the etymology with tomos.  With the slices we return to the false analyses of time.

The ana- here is not the animal: it is merely the sense of slice "up completely" as in ana-temnein.

Heidegger is at pains to distinguish man from animal in Das Ding. But he will not have recourse to reason or even language: man is the one who dies.  The animal merely comes to an end.  The parallel with gender and sex should be obvious: the sexual act, despite the clear anatomical similarities across female mammals and male mammals - the act between man and maiden is not bestial. In man the climax is "the little death".  But "climax" is the climbing of steps: it only came into use with regards to orgasm in pamphlets on birth control - Heidegger often refers to "steps" and surely understood birth control with all of his affairs - but we must not look there: we have simply "organismus" which in German is Lebewesen and so no direct connection to Orgasmus.

But Lebewesen we do have: and we have Geheimnis.  [to be continued in another section] (my pun)

In order to pursue "Das Ding dingt" it is necessary to place his text so that translations and selective annotations are available: glosses at the conventional, polite level (for which Heidegger had such disdain) and those properly Nietzschean notices that he would wish to share only with what he called "womanly" company - for certain of his insights he was loathe to share with men (see his letter to Elfride indexed in my post on that Briefwechsel book's incomplete index.)  I will endeavor to do this at http://phil.aule-browser.com/ once I have completed a posting of Galileo's pre-Venusian Sidereal Messenger.