Heidegger on Enframing and Releasment

Heidegger on Enframing and Releasment
- A Workshop, University of Sussex
19th June 2014
Room Arts A 108

This workshop seeks to bring together a series of talks by both well
established and up and coming Heidegger scholars on two key themes in the
later thought of Martin Heidegger. The terms Gelassenheit, often translated
as ‘releasement’, and Gestell, translated as ‘enframing’ or ‘standing
reserve’, serve as two central and opposing concepts. With the recent
translations into English of the two key volumes of Heidegger’s collected
works, the Country Path Conversations (2010) and the Bremen and Freiburg
Lectures (2012), these critical terms in Heidegger’s philosophy are finally
able to be approached in their original contexts. The workshop focuses
centrally on important Heideggerian critiques of science, technology, modern
industrialized society, as well as his thoughts on the comportment
(Gelassenheit) which is able to resist the restrictive domain of modern
techno-scientific thought (Gestell). Also included are Heidegger’s early
reflections on the status of “things”, the errancy of metaphysics, art and
language, and proper thinking.

Together, these two texts and their attendant concepts are the central
points of entry into Martin Heidegger’s later thinking and this workshop
seeks to bring together into dialogue this rich philosophical material.

Workshop Programme

10:30 - 10:50 Registration + Coffee

10:50 - 11:00 Welcome by Organizers


11:00 - 13:00 Presentations and Discussion


Mahon O’ Brien (Sussex): Introduction to Heidegger’s concepts of Gestell and
Gelassenheit

Tobias Keiling (Freiburg): Verhaltenheit and Gelassenheit

Christopher Merwin (New School): Heidegger’s Challenge: Gelassenheit,
Gestell, and the Beiträge (for the few)

Chair: Christos Hadjioannou

13:00- 14:00 Lunch Break

14:00- 15:20 Papers

Margot Wielgus (Kentucky): Cultivating Gelassenheit through Thinking

Aaron Wendland (Johannesburg): Gestell contra Gelassenheit?: An Essay on
Heidegger and Kuhn

Chair: Jana Elsen

15:20- 15:30 Coffee break

15:30- 17:00 Keynote Address and Round Table Discussion


Professor Simon Glendinning (LSE)

Convener: Paul Davies (Sussex)

*Drinks at IDS bar (on campus) and dinner in town

For more information please contact Christos Hadjioannou at
[email protected]