Task of Thinking (Aufgabe des Denkens)

Heidegger's late name for post-philosophical thinking — a thinking that is neither metaphysics nor science, preparatory not founding (vorbereitend nicht stiftend), abseits ohne Effekt (apart, without effect), gleichwohl von eigener Notwendigkeit. Locus classicus: "Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens" (1964) §2, pp. 73–90. The task is the second clause of the essay's title and the positive correlate of the end-of-philosophy diagnostic. The task's matter (Sache): the Lichtung-as-Aletheia that philosophy from Plato through Hegel-Husserl has operated within but never thought als solche. The renamed Titel of this task — replacing Sein und Zeit — would be: Lichtung und Anwesenheit (per the 1964 essay's closing question).

Key Points

• Neither metaphysics nor science: The task of thinking is structurally outside both forms philosophy has taken in its Vollendung — metaphysics-as-grounding-representation and science-as-cybernetic-functioning. Ein Denken, das weder Metaphysik noch Wissenschaft sein kann?
• Preparatory, not founding: "Sie begnügt sich mit der Erweckung einer Bereitschaft des Menschen für eine Möglichkeit, deren Aufriß dunkel, deren Kommen ungewiß bleibt" (GA 14 p. 74). The task contents itself with awakening readiness in man for a possibility whose outline is dark and whose coming uncertain.
• Geringer als die Philosophie: The task is lesser, not greater, than philosophy. Lesser because (a) it is forced to look back on the whole history of philosophy; (b) it has no public effect in the technical-scientific industrial age; (c) it is preparatory, not founding.
• Three modal features: Abseits (apart, off to the side), ohne Effekt (without effect), gleichwohl von eigener Notwendigkeit (yet of its own necessity). The post-philosophical task is not effect-less because failed; it is structurally outside the cybernetic regime of effects.
• Outside the rational/irrational distinction: "Vielleicht gibt es ein Denken außerhalb der Unterscheidung von rational und irrational, nüchterner noch als die wissenschaftliche Technik" (GA 14 p. 89). The task is more sober than scientific technics, not less rational; the rational/irrational distinction is itself an effect within the Vollendung.
• Erziehung zum Denken: "Wir alle bedürfen noch einer Erziehung zum Denken" (GA 14 p. 89). We all still need an education in thinking, and prior to that a knowledge of what Erziehung and Unerziehung in thinking mean. Aristotle Met IV (1006a sqq.) on ἀπαιδευσία — to have no eye for what needs proof and what doesn't — is the 1964 essay's authority for this Erziehung.
• Preisgabe (giving-over): "Die Aufgabe des Denkens wäre dann die Preisgabe des bisherigen Denkens an die Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens" (GA 14 p. 90, closing). The task is the giving-over — surrender, exposure — of previous thinking to the Bestimmung of the matter of thinking.
• The renamed title: "Lautet dann der Titel der Aufgabe des Denkens statt »Sein und Zeit«: Lichtung und Anwesenheit?" (GA 14 p. 90). The Aufgabe receives a new title — Lichtung und Anwesenheit — replacing the SuZ-1927 working title.

Details

Preparatory, Not Founding

The cardinal modal feature of the task is its preparatory character. GA 14 p. 74:

"Gering aber bleibt das vermutete Denken vor allem deshalb, weil seine Aufgabe nur einen vorbereitenden, keinen stiftenden Charakter hat. Sie begnügt sich mit der Erweckung einer Bereitschaft des Menschen für eine Möglichkeit, deren Aufriß dunkel, deren Kommen ungewiß bleibt."

The two contrasted characters are vorbereitend (preparing) and stiftend (founding/establishing). Stiftung is Husserl's term for primal-establishment, foundation; Heidegger explicitly says the task is not Stiftung. The task does not found a new metaphysics, a new ontology, a new philosophical school. It only prepares — and what it prepares is not a structure but a Bereitschaft (readiness) in man for a Möglichkeit whose content remains undetermined.

This contrasts with two strong alternative modal forms:

• Stiftung as Husserl uses it: the foundational establishment of an Ur-Stiftung (primal-foundation) along which subsequent Nach-Stiftungen are handed down. The task of thinking is not an Ur-Stiftung.
• Founding as in Sein und Zeit: SuZ tried to found fundamental ontology through the existential-analytic of Dasein. The 1964 essay says the task is not this kind of founding either; SuZ's Versuch was correctible (the Aletheia-Wahrheit Wegirren).

The preparatory character is non-founding in a structural sense: there is no matter to be founded. The matter — Aletheia-as-Lichtung — is prior to any founding; it grants foundings. The task is to attend to it, not to establish it.

Awakening Readiness for an Undetermined Possibility

The task's positive content: Erweckung einer Bereitschaft des Menschen für eine Möglichkeit. Three components:

• Erweckung: awakening, arousing. Not creating, not establishing, not founding. The Bereitschaft is latent in man and is awakened by the task's work.
• Bereitschaft: readiness, preparedness. A modal disposition, not a content. The reader who follows the 1964 essay does not learn a doctrine; the reader becomes ready for something whose content is undetermined.
• Möglichkeit: possibility. The possibility is "deren Aufriß dunkel, deren Kommen ungewiß bleibt." Both the outline (Aufriß) and the arrival (Kommen) are dark/uncertain. The possibility is not a determinate future state; it is the modal opening for a Bestimmung that may or may not arrive.

The marginalia (9) at "Bestimmung" gloss this as: "Be-Stimmung — aus der Stimme der Stille des nichtenden Nichts" — de-termination from the voice of the stillness of the nihilating nothing. The Bestimmung speaks out of the Stimme der Stille. The thinker's task is to be ready to hear this voice; the voice's arrival or non-arrival is not under the thinker's control.

Cross-corpus pointer: this connects to Was heißt Denken? (1951/52, GA 8) — marginal (2) at the title: "vgl. das Geheiß 1951/52." The Geheiß (commission, behest) is the prior form of what 1964 names Bestimmung-aus-der-Stimme-der-Stille. The task of thinking is to be addressed by this Geheiß.

Outside the Rational/Irrational Distinction

The task is not irrationalism. GA 14 p. 89:

"Vielleicht gibt es ein Denken, das nüchterner ist als das unaufhaltsame Rasen der Rationalisierung und das Fortreißende der Kybernetik. Vermutlich ist gerade dieser Fortriß äußerst irrational. Vielleicht gibt es ein Denken außerhalb der Unterscheidung von rational und irrational, nüchterner noch als die wissenschaftliche Technik, nüchterner und darum abseits, ohne Effekt und gleichwohl von eigener Notwendigkeit."

The argument has three steps:

1. Technical-scientific Rationalisierung and the Fortriß of cybernetics dominate the present age. They justify themselves by overwhelming Effekt.
2. The Fortriß is itself äußerst irrational — extremely irrational. The opposition between rational and irrational is internal to the Vollendung; both poles are effects of an unthought ground.
3. The task of thinking is neither rational nor irrational; it is more sober (nüchterner) than scientific technics, and therefore abseits (apart). Sobriety, not rationality.

The bodenlos-figure (used twice in the essay, p. 85 and p. 89) reinforces: Solange die Ratio und das Rationale in ihrem Eigenen noch fragwürdig bleiben, ist auch die Rede von Irrationalismus bodenlos. Calling something irrational requires a stable Ratio; the 1964 essay is destabilizing Ratio (questioning what Ratio, νοῦς, νοεῖν, vernehmen, Grund, Prinzip, Prinzip aller Prinzipien mean). With Ratio destabilized, the rational/irrational opposition has no ground.

This blocks the most common dismissal of late Heidegger ("grundlose Mystik, schlechte Mythologie, verderblicher Irrationalismus, Verleugnung der Ratio") — the dismissal presupposes what the essay is questioning.

The Aristotle Citation: Erziehung zum Denken

GA 14 p. 89: "Wir alle bedürfen noch einer Erziehung zum Denken und dem zuvor erst eines Wissens von dem, was Erziehung und Unerziehung im Denken heißt. Dazu gibt uns Aristoteles im IV. Buch seiner »Metaphysik« (1006 a sqq.) einen Wink. Er lautet: ἔστι γὰρ ἀπαιδευσία τὸ μὴ γιγνώσκειν τίνων δεῖ ζητεῖν ἀπόδειξιν καὶ τίνων οὐ δεῖ.

Heidegger renders: "Es ist nämlich Unerziehung, keinen Blick zu haben dafür, mit Bezug worauf es nötig ist, einen Beweis zu suchen, in bezug worauf dies nicht nötig ist."

The Aristotle text: Met IV chapter 4, on the principle of non-contradiction. Aristotle says (in context): some things need proof and some do not; not knowing the difference is uneducation. Heidegger redeploys this: in the present age, we have lost the eye for what needs no proof. The cybernetic regime demands proof of everything in the form of effect; Insistenz auf dem Beweisbaren blocks the way to what is.

The task of thinking includes (a) recovering the eye for what needs no proof and (b) experiencing what so demands without proof. Heidegger asks (p. 89): Ist es die dialektische Vermittlung oder die originär gebende Intuition oder keines von beiden? Darüber kann nur die Eigenheit dessen entscheiden, was vor allem anderen von uns verlangt, zugelassen zu werden. Wie aber soll dies uns die Entscheidung ermöglichen, bevor wir es nicht zugelassen haben?

The circle: only the matter itself can decide how it is to be experienced (dialectical mediation, originary intuition, or neither); but this decision presupposes the matter's being-let-in. The thinker is in a circle, unausweichlich (unavoidably). Heidegger's question (rhetorical): Ist es die εὐκύκλεος Ἀλήθεια, die gut gerundete Unverborgenheit selbst, gedacht als die Lichtung? — Is the circle in which we move the gut-gerundete Aletheia itself, thought as the Lichtung?

This is the 1964 essay's central rhetorical move: the circle in which the thinker moves is the circle of Parmenides's gut-gerundete Aletheia. The task is to enter this circle by admitting what demands admission — without first having a method.

Preisgabe (Giving-Over)

The closing sentence (GA 14 p. 90):

"Die Aufgabe des Denkens wäre dann die Preisgabe des bisherigen Denkens an die Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens."

The task = Preisgabe of previous thinking to the Bestimmung of the matter. The verb preisgeben (to give over, expose, surrender) does specific work:

• Not Aufhebung: the task is not Hegelian sublation of previous thinking. It is not preserving-while-elevating.
• Not Überwindung: the task is not overcoming of previous thinking. Cf. vollendung-der-metaphysik §"What It Rejects" — Vollendung is not Überwindung. The Aufgabe is not "now we overcome philosophy."
• Not Verlassen: the task is not leaving previous thinking. The task is forced to look back on the whole history of philosophy.
• Preisgabe: giving-over with overtones of exposure (preisgeben = to expose, to make available at risk). The previous thinking is exposed to the Bestimmung of the matter — the Bestimmung speaks into previous thinking and reorders it.

The matter at issue (Sache) is Bestimmung itself — Be-Stimmung (de-termination) from the Stimme der Stille des nichtenden Nichts. The task is the Preisgabe of previous thinking to what speaks in the voice of stillness. Previous thinking is not destroyed; it is given over to a Bestimmung that now reorders it.

This Preisgabe-figure is the modal name for the post-philosophical task in its operational form. Without it, the closing of the essay would default to Verlassen (leaving) or Überwindung (overcoming) — both of which Heidegger has explicitly rejected.

The Renamed Title: Lichtung und Anwesenheit

The introductory paragraph anticipated: "Demzufolge wird sich der Titel der Aufgabe »Sein und Zeit« ändern" (GA 14 p. 67). The closing executes:

"Lautet dann der Titel der Aufgabe des Denkens statt »Sein und Zeit«: Lichtung und Anwesenheit?" (GA 14 p. 90)

The substitution: SuZ → Lichtung und Anwesenheit. The new title makes explicit what SuZ tried but did not bring to clarity. Marginal (27) at p. 87: "»Seinsfrage« in Sein und Zeit der verkürzte Titel für die Frage nach der Herkunft der ontologischen Differenz" — the SuZ-Seinsfrage was the abbreviated title for the question of the origin of the ontological difference. The new title makes the Herkunft explicit: Lichtung (the origin) und Anwesenheit (the presencing-side of the ontological difference).

Marginal (30) at p. 90 revises even the closing question: "Anwesenheit (ontologische Differenz) und Lichtung — vgl. 88 Akademie München." The parenthesis "(ontologische Differenz)" identifies Anwesenheit-as-such with the ontological difference itself. The published essay's renamed task — "Lichtung und Anwesenheit" — receives a further marginal form: Anwesenheit (= ontological difference) and Lichtung.

The published essay is therefore not the final form of its own central thesis; the Akademie München and Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens manuscripts (GA 80) carry the further form. The wiki preserves both — the published title-substitution and the marginal further-form — as the 1964-and-after version of the task's name. See lichtung §"Lichtung as the Renamed Title of the SuZ-Task" and ontological-difference for the cross-page implications.

Three Negative Features

The task is defined largely by what it is not. The 1964 essay names three negative features explicitly (GA 14 p. 73-74):

1. Behind, not above, philosophy (geringer als die Philosophie). The task is less than philosophy, not more. It is forced to look back on the whole history of philosophy; it cannot stand "above" the great philosophers. Schon dadurch bleibt das vermutete Denken notwendig hinter der Größe der Philosophen zurück.
2. Without public effect in the technical-scientific industrial age. Geringer auch deshalb, weil diesem Denken noch entschiedener als schon der Philosophie sowohl die unmittelbare als auch die mittelbare Wirkung in der technisch-wissenschaftlich geprägten Öffentlichkeit des Industriezeitalters versagt sein muß. The task has no public reach, neither immediate nor mediate.
3. Preparatory, not founding (see above).

These three features are mutually reinforcing. Behind + no effect + preparatory together constitute a thinking that is abseits — apart, off to the side. The thinking is not hidden, not esoteric, not mystical; it is simply not where the cybernetic age looks.

What the Concept Does

The task-of-thinking concept performs five argumentative tasks:

1. It opens a positive correlate to the end-of-philosophy diagnostic. The end is closed with respect to the last possibility (Vollendung). The task addresses the first possibility (what philosophy had to start from but never thought). The two clauses of the 1964 essay's title are inseparable.
2. It defines a modal form for post-philosophical thinking. Preparatory, not founding; behind, not above; without effect; Preisgabe; abseits. The form is structurally negative but positively necessary (von eigener Notwendigkeit).
3. It blocks the dismissal-as-irrationalism. The task is more sober, not less rational. Rational/irrational is itself an opposition within the Vollendung; the task moves outside the opposition.
4. It supplies the renamed title of the SuZ-task. Lichtung und Anwesenheit (or Anwesenheit (ontologische Differenz) und Lichtung in the marginal). The renaming is the operational form of the post-1930 immanente Kritik of Sein und Zeit.
5. It articulates the Erziehung zum Denken. We need an education in thinking; we need to recover what needs no proof. Aristotle's ἀπαιδευσία is the diagnostic frame.

What It Rejects

• Reading post-philosophical thinking as a new philosophy. The task is not a new metaphysics, ontology, school. It is not Stiftung.
• Reading the task as Hegelian Aufhebung of philosophy. The matter is not preserved-while-elevated but given-over-to (Preisgabe).
• Reading the task as Nietzschean Überwindung of metaphysics. The 1964 essay is consistent with vollendung-der-metaphysik §"What It Rejects" — Vollendung is not Überwindung; nor is the task.
• Reading the task as Mystik or Mythologie or Irrationalismus. The task is more sober, not less. The dismissal-as-irrationalism presupposes a stable Ratio; the task is destabilizing what Ratio means.
• Reading the task as founding on the Lichtung. The Lichtung is not a new metaphysical foundation; the task attends to the Lichtung without founding on it. Preisgabe, not Stiftung.
• Reading the task as philosophical in any modal sense. The task is neither metaphysics nor science; both forms philosophy has taken in its Vollendung are exhausted.

Stakes

• The 1964 essay is the public, datable articulation of the post-1930 immanente Kritik of Sein und Zeit. The introductory paragraph announces this: the task-formulation is part of "den seit 1930 immer wieder unternommene[n] Versuch, die Fragestellung von »Sein und Zeit« anfänglicher zu gestalten." The renaming of the task is the operational form of the immanent critique.
• The wiki's lichtung page carries the matter; this page carries the modal form of post-philosophical engagement. The two are inseparable: without the matter, the task is empty; without the task's modal form, the matter is hypostatized into a new metaphysics.
• The Aristotle Met IV citation gives the task its ground in classical philosophy. Aristotle's ἀπαιδευσία is not a Heideggerian neologism; it is a Greek diagnostic of what makes inquiry possible at all. The task of thinking is recovering this diagnostic against the cybernetic regime of universal Beweisbar.
• The Stimme der Stille / Geheiß register connects 1964 to Was heißt Denken? (1951/52). The marginalia (2) and (9) flag this. The task of thinking is the modal form of being addressed by the Geheiß; the Bestimmung is de-termination from the voice of stillness. The thinker is not the source.

Problem-Space

The task-of-thinking concept articulates a recurring philosophical problem: what is the modal form of thinking when the tradition that made thinking philosophical has reached its end? The problem appears under different vocabularies:

• Hölderlin / late Heidegger: poetic dwelling, "Hirt des Seins" (shepherd of Being). The task as Hüten (guarding) of the matter. Cross-corpus connection in NII through Hölderlin.
• Wittgenstein (Tractatus 6.54, PI §123): philosophy ends in Schweigen (silence) or in therapeutic dissolution of philosophical pseudo-problems. Structurally analogous to Heidegger's abseits, ohne Effekt but with different content.
• MP (per *In Praise of Philosophy*): philosophy as interrogation — the successful form of hyper-reflection and hyper-dialectic. MP shares the diagnostic that philosophy cannot be founding but rejects Heidegger's abseits, ohne Effekt — for MP, philosophy is bound to the present. See interrogation.
• Carbone 2004 on MP's letting-be as beneath the activity-passivity distinction — see letting-be. Possible structural parallel with Heidegger's Preisgabe; tempting cross-author claim but should remain Open Question.
• Vattimo: pensiero debole — weak thought as the modal form post-metaphysical thinking takes.

The wiki tracks the task-of-thinking as Heidegger's specific 1964 articulation. Cross-tradition links are flagged but not adjudicated.

Connections

• is the positive correlate of end-of-philosophy — the two clauses of the 1964 essay's title are inseparable.
• attends to lichtung — the Lichtung is the matter; the task attends to it in Preisgabe-mode.
• attends to aletheia — the Aletheia-Lichtung identification is the matter's primary attestation in Parmenides.
• requires lethe-verbergung — the task's preparatory character is structurally required because the matter conceals itself; there is no founding-without-Lethe.
• renames the SuZ-task — Sein und Zeit → Lichtung und Anwesenheit (or Anwesenheit (ontologische Differenz) und Lichtung in the marginal). See lichtung §"Lichtung as the Renamed Title."
• is the operational form of the post-1930 immanente Kritik of Sein und Zeit (1927) — the task-formulation is part of the long correctional project Heidegger announces in the introductory paragraph.
• is not Stiftung — explicit contrast with stiftung. The task is vorbereitend, not stiftend. Preparatory thinking does not establish.
• is not Aufhebung, Überwindung, or Verlassen — Preisgabe (giving-over) is the proper modal form.
• enacts the unthought-method reflexively on the call "zur Sache selbst" of Hegel and Husserl. The same procedure MP redeploys (in Signs "The Philosopher and his Shadow," 1959) Heidegger here turns reflexively on himself and the modern call to the Sache.
• is grounded in Aristotle Met IV (1006a sqq.) on ἀπαιδευσία — the Greek diagnostic of what makes inquiry possible at all.
• operates outside the rational/irrational distinction — see this page §"Outside the Rational/Irrational Distinction." The opposition is internal to the Vollendung.
• is in cross-corpus continuity with Was heißt Denken? (1951/52, GA 8) — the Geheiß is the prior form of the 1964 Bestimmung-aus-der-Stimme-der-Stille. Marginal (2) explicit cross-ref.
• *is contestably analogous to MP's letting-be — Carbone 2004's claim that Heidegger's Gelassenheit still oscillates with active-passive distinction (where MP's laisser-être is beneath it) may need revisiting in light of the 1964 essay's Preisgabe-figure. See lichtung §"Open Questions" and letting-be §"Open Questions" for the false-friend caution.
• contrasts with MP's interrogation — both are post-metaphysical modal forms for philosophy. False-friend caution: MP's interrogation is bound to the present, embodied; Heidegger's task is abseits, ohne Effekt. Different topologies.
• contrasts with MP's nonphilosophy — both diagnose philosophy as constitutively in crisis; the post-philosophical modal forms differ. See end-of-philosophy §"Problem-Space."

Open Questions

• What does attending to the Lichtung look like operationally? Heidegger names Preisgabe, Erweckung einer Bereitschaft, Erziehung zum Denken. None of these is a method. Is the task's operational form anti-methodical by structural necessity, or merely undeveloped in 1964?
• Is the task's abseits (apart) feature a consolation or a diagnosis? Critics (including MP per martin-heidegger §"Critical Distance") read the abseits as philosophical retreat into silence. Defenders read it as refusal of cybernetic recruitment. The wiki preserves the question.
• Does the Preisgabe enable Auseinandersetzung? The task is Preisgabe of previous thinking; auseinandersetzung is Heidegger's echte Kritik mode. Are these the same operation in two registers, or is Preisgabe a deeper mode that makes Auseinandersetzung possible?
• Is the Erziehung zum Denken compatible with the Erweckung einer Bereitschaft? Education suggests deliberate cultivation; awakening suggests passive reception. The 1964 essay names both. The compatibility is unargued.
• What is the relation between the 1964 task's abseits and the 1944-45 Conversation on a Country Path's Gelassenheit? Both are post-philosophical modal forms; both refuse cybernetic recruitment. Are they the same or distinct? Carbone 2004 argues Gelassenheit still oscillates with active-passive distinction; the 1964 Preisgabe arguably escapes the oscillation. Cross-corpus comparison needed.

Sources

• heidegger-1964-end-of-philosophy — the locus classicus. Section 2, GA 14 pp. 73–90. Three negative features at p. 73-74; preparatory-not-founding at p. 74; awakening-readiness at p. 74; outside rational/irrational at p. 89; Aristotle ἀπαιδευσία citation at p. 89; Erziehung zum Denken at p. 89; renamed title Lichtung und Anwesenheit at p. 90; closing Preisgabe-formula at p. 90. Plus Handexemplar marginalia (2), (8), (9) on Bestimmung / Stimme der Stille; (27) on the Seinsfrage as Herkunft der ontologischen Differenz; (30) on the marginal further-form of the renamed title.