From Oikeiosis to Ereignis: Heidegger and the Fate of Stoicism

Abstract

This paper proceeds by investigating three ‘topoi’ or sites within Heidegger’s texts where the presence of Stoicism most fundamentally articulates itself as critical to his understanding of the truth of being (aletheia) and its historical destining as Ereignis. We will begin with the “Letter on Humanism” (1947), the most comprehensive “public’ statement of his later thought-by first considering how Ereignis-often translated as the event or event of appropriation to indicate the historical destining of being-might be said to be consonant with the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis-the appropriation or familiarization with oneself echoed by both Chrysippus and Hierocles. In doing so, we will attempt to trace Heidegger’s interpretation of oikeiosis back into the origins of his fundamental ontology by turning to the genesis of care/cura (Sorge) in Sein und Zeit (1927)-specifically the Roman myth of Hyginus that bears its name-before concluding with an early lecture course, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (1920-1921) where his engagement with the Pauline tradition reveals oikeiosis to be a hidden enigma in his thinking about the meaning of being and its historical destining.