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Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398 Research
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Phenomenology
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Dislodged Experience as an Overcoming of Reason:

Towards a Phenomenology of Beyng
Erik Kuravsky | ORCID: 0000-0002-8365-5496

Minerva Stiftung Postdoc Fellow, Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät,
Universität Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
erikkuravsky@gmail.com
Abstract
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy approaches human transformation as an

overcoming of Western metaphysics. The nature of this transformation does not
imply a mere change of a worldview, an ethical or spiritual fulfillment, or even self-
transcendence. Instead, Heidegger speaks about a dislodgement of human essence.
In the article I address the notion of dislodgement as central for understanding the
nature of the shift required for the human selfhood to be grounded in Da-sein. I stress
the relation between dislodgement and an overcoming of reason as the basis of over-
coming metaphysics. I then focus on the way dislodgement transforms the nature of
experience, freeing it from the metaphysical constriction of a priority of beingness
and the psychological subjectivity that accompanies it. I point out that such a dis-
lodged experience transgresses the ontological-ontic distinction and thus offers a
phenomenological basis for experiencing the truth of Beyng. I also suggest that the
way to become prepared for such a full-fledged dislodgement is to be attentive to the
moments in which our experience betrays its belonginess to Beyng.
Keywords
Contributions to Philosophy – dislodgement – overcoming of metaphysics – reason –

Beyng – truth of Beyng
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1 Introduction
In Heidegger’s Contributions the term “Verrückung” – translated by Richard

Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu as “dislodgement” – appears profusely in
the context of the very task of the book, which is nothing other but facilitating
the transformation of human beings into Dasein. Namely, we hear that humans
need to be “dis-lodged (ver-rückt) out of a previous fixity,”1 that the first dislodg-
ing (verrückung) is the awakening of the plight of the abandonment by Beyng
through which humans come to stand in the event,2 that human being under-
takes, with regard to Being, a task which dis-lodges (ver-rückt) it from itself,3
that Da-sein is the in-cident (Ein-Fall) of that “between” into which humans
must be dis-lodged (ver-rückt) in order to first be themselves again,4 that the
task is not to explain projection but to dis-lodge (zu ver-rücken) human beings
into Da-sein5 and that the very openness of Being comes to be in the first place,
and only, with the very dislodgement (Verrückung) into it.6
The peculiarity of the term may be easily overlooked as Contributions is filled
with linguistic innovations. However, I believe that it requires a special atten-
tion for the following reason. Since many of the main themes of Contributions
are associated by Heidegger with Verrückung, clarifying the term will help
understanding what I believe to be Heidegger’s most important book. In par-
ticular, Heidegger uses the term Verrückung as opposed to “transcendence,” a
notion that was central to his early thought. Transcendence is said to be just
what obstructs Verrückung7 and is associated with a particular interpretation
of human essence. As I shall argue, this metaphysical interpretation of human
essence expresses a particular view on human experience determined by rea-
son. In this light, I shall display that the first step to understanding Verrückung
is to grasp it as a radical shift of what “experience” means.
My idea here is that Heidegger’s abstention from speaking about Beyng
by way of a metaphysical detour through beings does not mean that Beyng
itself has no experiential quality, but only that we should reject a specifi-
cally metaphysical understanding of experience. In other words, “thinking
from Beyng” does not contradict addressing human experience but requires
1 Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), translated by Richard Rojcewicz and
Daniela Vallega-Neu (Indiana University Press (11 Jun. 2012)), 22.
2 Ibid., 23.
3 Ibid., 249.
4 Ibid., 251.
5 Ibid., 258.
6 Ibid., 240.
7 Heidegger, Contributions, 22.
Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

Dislodged Experience as an Overcoming of Reason 377
a different understanding of what experience means.8 Accordingly, to speak

of Verrückung, and other Beyng-historical notions in Contributions in experi-
ential terms is not to move from the ontological level of discussion to an ontic
one, but to participate in the overcoming of the ontological difference itself,
a move required by Heidegger himself already in the Contributions. This, of
course, is only true if a new sense of experience is offered, one that is not ontic
in a regular metaphysical sense but that rather overcomes the ontological dif-
ference by being itself an experience of the ontological difference. To see what
such an experience might be like we first have to clearly see the ontological
constitution of our “regular” experience and to foresee how it can be overcome
by a Verrückung. Hence, before addressing what I named here “dislodged expe-
rience” as such, we must first lay out the lines upon which such an experience
would overcome metaphysics, or more specifically, a metaphysical interpre-
tation of reason that gives experience its familiar form. After that it will be
possible to suggest a form of experience that rather than merely represent-
ing beings in their beingness illuminates Beyng in its radical difference from
anything present. The notion of “dislodged experience” will thus serve as an
indication of a peculiar phenomenology of Beyng itself.
My analysis will consist of two parts. First, I show why Verrückung must be
understood as an overcoming of reason in a sense of overcoming a priority
and subjectivity of experience. Namely, I shall argue that an overcoming of
reason is not a result of a dislodgement of human essence but constitutes its
very core as it transforms the sense of what can be experienced. Second, I shall
offer a positive analysis of dislodged experience as a mode of experience dif-
ferent from the representational model. I shall argue that such experience is
neither subjective in the traditional sense nor ontic in a sense of being exclu-
sively related to beings, but rather affords a phenomenological access to the
ontological difference, and accordingly to Beyng.
2 Verrückung as Overcoming Reason
In this section, I shall argue that Verrückung entails a shift in the way one expe-
riences beings; in particular, it is a shift away from a metaphysical experience
8 Heidegger’s lectures and writings of the late 1930s and 1940s are full of references to the
need to experience the ontological difference (e.g., Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4:
Nihilism, edited by David Farrell Krell (HarperOne, 1991), 187), experience Beyng (e.g.,
Martin Heidegger, Mindfulness, translated by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (Bloomsbury
Academic, 2016), 46), experience the reality of our history (Ibid., 57), experience the truth of
Beyng (Ibid., 76) etc.
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as such and it can be best described as an overcoming of reason. To be sure,

Verrückung is not a simple denial of reason.
As Heidegger stresses time and again, overcoming is not a rejection but
a thoughtful inquiry into the ontological foundation of a phenomenon. For
example, the overcoming of metaphysics is not a rejection of metaphysics – as
if it were simply saying something incorrect – but an exposure of its histori-
cal inception and consequent evolution always guided by a particular inter-
pretation of Being. To be sure, to overcome metaphysics is to illuminate both
the failure of its initial foundation and the failure of its consequence.9 Yet, far
from saying that metaphysics is a merely accidental opinion, the overcoming
of metaphysics illuminates the exceptional essence of the truth of Beyng as
concealing itself precisely as this failure, thus allowing us to approach it solely
by way of thinking the origin of the failure of metaphysics. In the same man-
ner, we must overcome reason not by rejecting it but by thinking its failure in
terms of its contribution to the forgetfulness of Being.
In the texts from the middle-late 1930s, Heidegger often presents human
transformation as contrasting traditional reason. For example, he writes that the
transformative leap seems to be most thoughtless or reckless (Rücksichtslosest),
and that mindfulness is an overcoming of reason (Vernunft) both as a mere
receiving of what is pre-given and as explaining.10 Notably, Heidegger reserves
his criticism to what he calls a degraded reason which takes the form of ratio-
nality as “a principle of machination.”11 This reservation insinuates that to over-
come reason is not to abandon it altogether but to “return” to its more original
sense. This sense, however, will be something different from rationality. Yet
since, human essence is thought in metaphysics precisely as a “rational ani-
mal,” a Verrückung of human essence must entail an overcoming of the meta-
physical basis of this essence. That is, Verrückung does not merely result in an
overcoming of metaphysical reason, but in some sense indicates what happens
in such overcoming.
We see further evidence that Verrückung in a sense of human transfor-
mation is connected to overcoming reason in Heidegger’s accusation of rea-
son and rationality in distorting our understanding of what “truth” means.12
Moreover, the basic position that resides in Western metaphysics – the one
that we need to overcome – is characterized by reason and by thinking in a
9 Martin Heidegger, Metaphysik und Nihilismus (GA 67), ed. H.-J. Friedrich (Verlag Vittorio
Klostermann, 1999), 8.
10 Heidegger, Mindfulness, 39.
12 Ibid., 271.

sense of “ratio.”13 Such a “rational” thinking, Heidegger writes, “remains pri-

mary in establishing the horizon for the interpretation of beings as such” since
the Greeks. Accordingly, overcoming of metaphysics can hardly be understood,
even less undertaken, without an overcoming of reason. So how is Verrückung
related to an overcoming of reason?
Heidegger introduces Verrückung early in Contributions when he speaks
about the common assumption of all available worldviews and interpretations
of human beings. Namely, human beings are always understood as “fixed in
their determinability instead of being determined as what must be dis-lodged
(ver-rückt) out of a previous fixity [.]” That is, independently of whether one
thinks humans to be physical machines processing information or spiritual
creatures made by God, there is an assumption that human essence is deter-
mined (e.g., as either a machine or a creature), and even if we don’t perfectly
fulfill this essence and require some sort of work on ourselves, it is in principle
determined what exactly needs to be improved (e.g., Hegel’s history). These
views, Heidegger writes, are based on the model of “transcendence,” assuming
that humans are able to reach beyond themselves yet always thinking such
a “beyond” in relation to a fixed essence of what is to be surpassed. Hence,
Heidegger writes:
Yet how are human beings supposed to be dislodged (verrückt) out of

their fixity, to which belongs primarily the domination of those “transcen-
dences” and of their mixtures? If humans must carry out this dislodging
by relying on their own resources, then is not the presumptuousness of
giving the measure even greater than it is when the human being is sim-
ply put forth as the measure?14
This passage consists of two important points which may seem unrelated.
First, the model of transcendence, which assumes that an already determined
human essence is related to something beyond it, is an obstacle for Verrückung.15
13 Ibid., 143.
15 Heidegger uses the term “transcendence” in his fundamental ontology and especially in
his metontology in a totally different sense. This is especially clear in the metontological
lectures such as “On the Essence of Ground” and “On the Essence of Truth” where beings
are shown to play a transcendental role as an each time finitely unconcealed sphere,
which simply does not have any single pre-determined structure (such as Kantian catego-
ries). Heidegger’s early usage of the term transcendence, as I argue elsewhere, meant to
overcome the subject-object dichotomy by not setting a relation to an object (i.e., inten-
tionality) as a basis of human experience. Instead, a happening of Dasein’s transcendence
is a hermeneutical event in which an understanding of Being is finite and determined by

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Second, human beings are put forth as the measure and even think they can
“carry out” Verrückung by relying on their own resources. Metaphysically
speaking, the two points speak about a priority and subjectivity as obstructing
human transformation. As I see it, this is the key to understanding why reason
must be overcome since, taken together, a priority and subjectivity constitute
the essence of representational consciousness as the basis of (metaphysical)
reason.16 It is this basis that obstructs a dis-lodgment of human essence since
it would entail letting go of the very measure in terms of which it is repre-
sented and enacted. That is, if any “beyond” is thought in relation to a fixity of
human essence, it is impossible to represent a shift of this fixity.17 Importantly,
this interpretation of human beings depends on a particular interpretation of
Being. Namely, what is important is not that human essence is thought as such
and such but that it is fixed a priori. What obstructs Verrückung is not some or
other opinion regarding human subjectivity but the fact that subjectivity – in
its relation to the a priori – belongs to the fundamentals of Western metaphys-
ics. That is, the metaphysical understanding of reason pertains precisely to
Dasein’s thrownness. Thrownness, rather than indicating mere contingency of Dasein’s

situation, is the central aspect of Heidegger’s notion of transcendence, as it breaks the
condition-conditioned schema and makes any (traditionally) transcendental interpre-
tation of Dasein impossible. In fact, Heidegger says directly that when he names his
early philosophy “transcendental” it only means that it illuminates transcendence. For
example: “Hierunter verstehen wir erstens alles, was zur Transzendenz als solcher gehört;
zweitens nennen wir transzendental all das, was seiner inneren Möglichkeit nach auf
Transzendenz zurückweist. Was transzendental besagt, ist nur zu erörtern, wenn das
Wesen der Transzendenz bestimmt ist.” GA 27: 207.
16 “No matter how our histories may tabulate the concept and course of modernity, no
matter which phenomena in the fields of politics, poetry, the natural sciences, and the
social order they may appeal to in order to explain modernity, no historical meditation
can afford to bypass two mutually related essential determinations within the history of
modernity: first, that man installs and secures himself as subjectum, as the nodal point
for beings as a whole; and secondly, that the beingness of beings as a whole is grasped
as the representedness of whatever can be produced and explained.” Martin Heidegger,
Nietzsche. Vol3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, edited by David Farrell
Krell (HarperOne, 1991), 178.
17 Indeed, before Contributions Heidegger has already developed the idea that in Western
philosophy subjectivity is taken as an ontological measure, so that the Being of beings
turned into a mere structure appropriate for the representability of objects (e.g., Kant’s
transcendental categories). In his lectures, Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger
explains that Western metaphysics proceeds by questioning beings as these appear
to perception, i.e., as those are represented by a subject. Indeed, even the relation to
Being is thought as a relation of a (representing) subject to an object. (Martin Heidegger,
Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Gregory Frieds and Richard Polt (Yale
University Press, 2014), 144).

reason’s self-exaltation to a position of a measure-setting subjectivity, deciding

a priori on the meaning of Being.18 As Heidegger writes,
Precisely the a priori character shows that being is no longer and will
never in future be questioned in all metaphysics at all and that is, being
inquired from within itself back into itself. The a priori denies being its
own essential occurrence back into itself. A priori and the mathematical
and – μάθημα and ψυχή. The a priori – essentially related to soul, spirit,
reason, consciousness.19
The configuration of human essence as already determined accompanies a par-

ticular interpretation of Being, namely as an a priori ιδέα. It is this interpreta-
tion that according to Heidegger obstructs the question of Being. The a priority
of the soul and the a priority of Being are determined “at the same time” since
the moment we agree that there is an a priori structure to the world, the soul
also complies to this temporal configuration and is limited to merely “look-
ing” upon this structure, i.e., to representing it. “The metaphysical essence of
reason, ” says Heidegger, “consists in the fact that being as a whole is projected
as a guideline for representational thought and is interpreted as such.”20 And
vice versa – if we take ourselves as merely witnessing beings’ presence – rather
than affecting its mode – then this very presence of beings is taken as their
Being and can, for example, be further analyzed in terms of categories.21 Or,
as Heidegger expresses it, the Being of the one who represents is the measure
of what is represented as such.22 This metaphysical interpretation of Being
is the root of the domination of reason as it affords it to seize a position of
18 As Heidegger explains, “sub-jectum” is that which “under-lies and lies-at-the-base-of,

what already lies before of itself.” (Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 96). Thus, reason is
corrupted precisely in a sense that it puts a particular mode of reasoning (i.e., rationality)
as a under-lying every being that lies before us.
19 “Zur Auslegung des Seins (ούσία) als a priori kommt es, weil φύσις zur ιδέα geworden,
weil Sein Anwesung und weil zugleich diese aus Vernommenheit durch Vernehmen – der
Seele.
Gerade der Apriori-charakter zeigt ein, daß das Sein nicht mehr und künftig nie
in aller Metaphysik überhaupt befragt und d.h. aus ihm selbst erfragt wird in es selbst
zurück. – Das Apriori verwehrt dem Sein die eigene Wesung in sich zurück. A priori und
das Mathematische und – μάθημα und ψυχή. Das A-priori – wesenhaft auf Seele, Geist,
Vernunft, Bewußtsein bezogen.” GA67: 87.
20 Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, 217.
21 Categories, Heidegger says, are the “basic words of metaphysics.” Heidegger, Nietzsche.
Vol4: Nihilism, 39.
22 Ibid., 116.

382 kuravsky
the universally true by establishing its ability for “adjustment and invention
of what is identical” as a priori determination of beings as such. Accordingly,
Heidegger sees in representation the fully developed essence of reason.23 Since
such a “corrupted” reason, which needs to be overcome, has the Platonic ιδέα
as its principle,24 to overcome reason means to overcome the interpretation
of Being as ιδέα. Such an overcoming is a dis-lodgment, not however out of a
particular fixity, but out of the very experience of fixed essences in the basis of
beings as constantly present. That is to say, an overcoming of reason is not, for
example, a mere change in our “theory of logic,” but a transformation of our
understanding of Being, and, as I shall show in the next section, a transforma-
tion of our experience and of our sense of what experience means at all.
As Heidegger says in the lecture course “Basic Questions of Philosophy”
which took place during the composition of Contributions, such a dis-lodgment
may seem insane from the perspective of the common sense.25 The seeming
insanity here pertains to the fact that it denies the ontological right of reason
to claim that the Being of beings is exhausted or even originally understood
at all when it is reduced to whatever reason can take up. That is, it denies that
reason, taken in its essential relation to representational subjectivity, can serve
as a measure of Being. Crucially, such a denial is not an idea but an experi-
ence of the plight of abandonment by Being,26 that is of the fact that reason
has usurped the “place” where Being should occur, by reducing it to a mere
idea. This experience is the first Verrückung – the dis-lodged experience of the
fact that beings are “emptied out of Being.” Such a dislodged experience can
hardly be named “ontic” in a sense in which earlier Heidegger spoke about
experience; indeed, it is not an experience of present beings from which a
metaphysical detour to their beingness could be taken. Instead, a dislodged
experience of the plight already transgresses the ontological difference, not
however by abandoning it (as happens in metaphysics) but by “including” the
differentiated elements within it – Beyng itself is experienced “negatively”
in its abandonment. What seemed impossible under the rule of metaphysi-
cal reason – that the ontological difference can itself be experienced – is the
basic trait of dislodged experience. Far from being merely an outcome of
23 Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, 222.
24 Ibid., 176.
25 “But if we measure the mindfulness of such a dislodging (Verrückung) of man from the
perspective of common sense and its fluency, we will reject such a thing, cleverly taking
up the phrase “insane” (“verrückt”) – not even bothering to reject it, but just smiling at
such a thought.” Martin Heidegger, Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte “Probleme”
der “Logik” (GA 45), ed. F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992), 215.

Verrückung, the overcoming of reason constitutes the very experiential dimen-

sion of undergoing a Verrückung. It is this experiential dimension, rather than
some merely thought theory of Being, that transgresses the rule of metaphysi-
cal reason.
Though I cannot properly address here the relation between the seemingly
insane experiential dimension of the overcoming of reason and Heidegger’s
view on the transformation of language, it is important to stress that a dis-
lodgement of experience is also a dislodgement of language. Since dislodge-
ment takes us beyond the general a priori essences, it also takes us beyond
what can be said in word-signs (Wörter) and lets language be experienced in its
relation to the uniqueness of Beyng.27 Namely, to say that Beyng itself is expe-
rienced makes sense only if experience is determined by a non-metaphysical
essence of language and allows that which is essentially unique to come to
words (Worte).28 Indeed, the silent origin of such saying is not a muteness (as if
we merely could not formulate an appropriate account of Being), but an expe-
riential, non-verbal essence of language itself.29
Before attempting a positive characterization of dislodged experience,
I want to conclude this section by a brief explication of its negative mean-
ing, i.e., of the sense in which it leaves the sphere of the explainable and the
possible. Indeed, we may see the basic “ontological quarrel” between human
transformation as Verrückung and the interpretation of Being as an a priori in
that such an interpretation automatically authorizes reason to decide what is
possible,30 and it does so by setting up a specific interpretation of “possibility.”
As Heidegger stresses,
27 Ibid., 394.
28 Krzysztof Ziarek translates Wörter as dictionary terms or signs. These are words in their
usual metaphysical sense of naming species and categories of beings. Such words are
indispensable in everyday life and we largely rely on one’s ability to use words to witness
his or her sanity. Yet the semiological function of such sing-words is only possible because
the word (Das Wort) “‘gives’ through its poietic force. (Krzysztof Ziarek, Language After
Heidegger (Indiana University Press, 2013), 89). That is to say, the everyday language hides
its poietic origin – the uniqueness and the simplicity of Beyng, i.e., of the Word, is left out;
language itself already testifies for the abandonment of Beyng.
29 This of course does not mean that language belongs to subjective experience. As I shall fur-
ther show, dislodged experience is not subjective and not even human in the regular sense.
30 “Die Möglichkeitsfrage ist die einzige Grundweise des metaphysischen Denkens; der
Rückgang auf das Apriori und die Mißdeutung dieses Vorgehens im Sinne einer kausalen
Erklärung aus obersten Ursachen gehören beide als Ausformungen in die Möglichkeits
frage.“ GA 67: 24.

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‘Possibility’ is meant here as ‘enabling’ the essence as the reality of the

real. But reality is considered to be the measure-giving Being; (to show
how the ένέργεια in the precedence comes from the φύσις).31
The “possibility problem,” as seen by Heidegger, concerns the restriction of

possibilities to metaphysical presence alone, i.e., to what can be represented.
The unreasonableness of dislodged experience seems to ignore the limits of
the possible while “possible” is understood in a sense in which philosophers
speak about “all possible worlds,” i.e., in a sense of all scenarios that do not
contradict the fundamental structure of the real. It is this “realness” of the real
that is considered to be the measure giving Being, setting the terms of what
can be questioned and in what way. As Heidegger stresses, this interpretation
of “possibility” assumes an a priori order stemming from an interpretation of
Being as ιδέα. To be sure, Heidegger does not mean that “anything is possible”
unless we are stuck in metaphysical thinking. Rather, the sense of the “pos-
sible” operative both in metaphysics and our everyday thinking is rooted in an
ungrounded assumption that only what fits the structure of beings’ represent-
ability is ontologically tenable.32 Moreover, Heidegger argues that the everyday
causal thinking is only a declined version of a more fundamental schema of
“enabling.” This schema is most evident in transcendental idealism where con-
sciousness enables the manifestation of beings as beings, but we meet it every
day when, for example, we say that moving to a large city makes possible (i.e.,
enables) meeting new people. The realness of a social encounter is enabled
by its causal structure, which in turn belongs to the a priori order of what can
count as a representation for consciousness. Namely, in order to be reason-
able regarding what is possible and what is not, one must have a measure “in
mind.” Reason provides a peculiar kind of measure in terms of which one can
calculate which particular ontic cases can be enabled. Reason – as a mode of
31 “»Möglichkeit« ist hier gedacht als »Ermöglichung« des Wesens als der Wirklichkeit des
Wirklichen. Die Wirklichkeit aber gilt als das maßgebende Sein; (zu zeigen, wie die ένέρ-
γεια in den Vorrang kommt als abkünftig von der φύσις).” Ibid. For Heidegger’s reading of
the meaning of Aristotle’s ένέργεια as a basis for an alternative sense of “possibility” see the
1931 lecture course on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (GA 31).
32 The apriority of the possible is echoed in an everyday understanding of the necessary as
“circumscribed and calculated within the perspective of what has gone before, of those
beings that are dominant (and their being).” (Martin Heidegger, The History of Beyng,
translated by William McNeill and Jeffrey Powell (Indiana University Press, 2015), 72) That
is, the decision to interpret Being as a priori beingness does not only affect the “classic” a
priory sphere of sense but also what is in principle a posteriori yet has gained the status of
what has been and what has thus determined the idea of what is possible and necessary.
On the contrary: “In essential thinking there are no paths laid out in advance.” Ibid., 145.

human existence in which Being is interpreted as an a priori form of represent-

edness – determines the possible and the impossible in this sense.33 However,
the overcoming of metaphysics, Heidegger says, comes along with the “impos-
sibility of the possibility-question.”34 Accordingly, Verrückung, as a shift that
belongs to such overcoming, transgresses the sphere of the reasonable and the
explainable.35 This transgression is a shift beyond the sphere of the possible
as it is constituted by reason. Yet, as long as the standard of thinking is set by
ontological reason, such a shift is sheer madness; we cannot represent it. It is
not that by overcoming reason we are unable to understand the limits of the
possible and to explain our own actions rationally, but that we are dis-lodged
out of a relation to Being in the context of which beings must confer to the
condition of being possible and explainable by a priori principles. That is to
say, beings are experienced differently and do not require rational explanation.
Moreover, the liberation of beings from the rule of the metaphysically pos-
sible can only happen if the dislodged experience is not an ontic experience
of beings alone in the sense Heidegger associates with metaphysics – thus ren-
dering Being to be a mere addendum to experience – but also, in some sense,
an experience of what is not present, of the ontological difference and of Being
itself. This, however, entails a different sense of experience.
3 Verrückung as a Different Mode of Experience
In the previous section, I presented an interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of

Verrückung as an overcoming of reason in its metaphysical sense. Moreover,
Heidegger tells us that (the first) Verrückung is an experience of the aban-
donment of Being. This experience is confusing since it takes us beyond the
sphere of the possible and the explainable, and thus, beyond the rational.
However, since reason determines what counts as a being (i.e., as what can be
represented in consciousness), it also decides what “experience” means. Thus,
33 “Being [in metaphysics] has the character of making possible, is the condition of possibil-
ity.” Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 165–166.
34 “Die Überwindung der Metaphysik und die Unmöglichkeit der Möglichkeitsfrage.”
GA67: 30.
35 Explainability is a central metaphysical principle known as the principle of sufficient
reason. As Van der Heiden points out, the very notion of event is required precisely in
order to think an alternative to this principle (Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Ontology after
Ontotheology: Plurality, Event, and Contingency in Contemporary Philosophy, (Duquesne
University Press, 2014), 6). Being, Heidegger says, is the most intelligible yet, as such, it
defies all intelligibility (Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 192).

386 kuravsky
what I call dislodged experience must entails a different sense of “experience.”

Therefore, I shall offer in this section a new sense of experience that trans-
gresses the metaphysical model of consciousness/reason and, as I suggest,
characterizes Verrückung in a sense of human transformation. I shall present
two main characteristics of such a dislodged experience corresponding to an
overcoming of the two main features of “normal” experience – a priority and
subjectivity.
Heidegger calls the “normal” everyday experience “lived experience.” In
short, lived experience is the way subjectivity as representational conscious-
ness relates to beings.36 Such an experience is essentially rational since it
reduces beings to what can be represented as constantly present.37 We may
say that as longs as reason determines the sense of Being as ιδέα, all experi-
ence is lived experience; it is the “basic form of representation belonging to
the machinational.”38 It is what we would normally call a “subjective experi-
ence of actual beings.” But in what sense does reason determine all experi-
ence as lived experience? As I stressed earlier, reason decides the sense of
the possible as that which can be enabled or produced in terms of the a priori
structure of beingness. It is this dependence on producibility that is central to
Heidegger’s association between machination and lived experience. Indeed, in
Contributions we hear that the representable is not only accessible in calcula-
tion but is also providable in production.39 Accordingly, Heidegger’s notion of
“machination” does not merely mean that human beings interpret the world in
terms of what can be produced (from the German “machen)”, but that we expe-
rience the world in a mode of producing experiences and meanings on the basis
of an a priori structure of Being as ιδέα. Lived experience and machination are
one for Heidegger.40 Therefore, since (metaphysical) reason rests on a repre-
sentational interpretation of Being as ιδέα and the a priori, I suggest viewing
lived experience as that mode of experience in which it is already decided who
is the experiencer and what experience means at all.41 In this light, Verrückung
is a spurt away from such a mode of experiencing. That is, it is confusing not
36 Heidegger opposed consciousness and lived experience to Dasein (Heidegger, Contri

butions, 55).
37 Ibid., 85.
38 Ibid., 87.
39 Ibid., 86.
40 “Whither does machination lead? To lived experience.” Heidegger, Ibid., 85.
41 These two characteristics pertain to the representational model of thought. As Daniela
Vallega-Neu points out, the subjectivity of lived experience lies not so much in that it
is experienced by human subjects but that it corresponds to the predominace of rep-
resentation over the Being of beings (Daniela Vallega-Neu, Heidegger’s Contributions to
Philosophy: an Introduction (Indiana University Press, 2013), 60).

because we experience something ambiguous, but because the very sense of

“experience” undergoes transformation and is open for further determination.
In other words, Verrückung shakes up our confidence in what does it mean to
experience something.
We can begin inferring the difference between “normal” lived experience
and dislodged experience from Heidegger’s explication of the nature of the
clearing (i.e., of the “there”) that accompanies the dislodgement from the
domain of lived experience. As Heidegger writes,
The self-concealing protrudes through the clearing, and only if that hap-
pens, i.e., only if the conflictual in its intimacy reigns throughout the
“there,” can the dislodgment (auszurücken) from the indeterminate (and,
as such, not at all grasped) domain of representation and lived experi-
ence succeed and can steadfastness in Dasein be attempted.42
Verrückung is grasped here as a move out (auszurücken) from the indetermi-

nate domain of representation (or consciousness) and lived experience. The
essence of this move lies foremost in that a self-concealing protrudes through
the clearing. Self-concealing characterizes Beyng as such; this is something
that was lost in metaphysics which allows only the present (i.e., the uncon-
cealed) and its beingness (Being as ιδέα). It is by forgetting the self-concealing
that the anthropological subject was established, i.e., as subject that represents
present beings alone. Yet, Heidegger writes in Contributions that we need to
“[release] human beings from the fetters of ‘anthropology.’”43 While Heidegger
exemplifies this release by showing that certain concepts from the sphere of
human experience belong foremost to Beyng (e.g., decision, machination),44
I believe that the opposite move is no less necessary. That is to say, to release
human experience from its metaphysically-anthropological interpretation
we should try to figure out how Beyng’s “characteristics” pertain to possible
human experience. After all, we hear time and again from Heidegger about a
different form of experience in which, for example, the event/enowning of the
ab-ground must be experienced.45 More so, both Beyng and its truth must be
experienced.46 As I argued in the previous section, this entails a new sense of
experience, one that is not “ontic” but that transgresses the ontic-ontological

43 Ibid., 67.
44 Ibid.
46 Ibid., 46. Ibid., 76.

388 kuravsky
distinction. In this light, I am convinced that the self-concealing belonging to

the clearing, no less belongs to human experience, yet, as Heidegger writes
in the cited passage, to an experience that does not belong to the domain of
representation and “lived experience.” Accordingly, I believe that to find out
the role of self-concealments in human experience is not to “anthropologize”
Heidegger, but to follow his incentive of releasing experience from all anthro-
pology. This release, Heidegger says is a dislodgement. So, what does this dis-
lodgement “do” to human experience?
Remembering what Heidegger says about representational consciousness,
we may infer that such a move breaks down the basic structure of conscious-
ness. Namely, if self-concealing protrudes through the clearing, there cannot be
an absolute a priori structure to experienced beings – a moment of strangeness
is inherent to beings. The abyss of self-concealment thus threatens the systema-
ticity of experience and one’s security of self-determination.47 A Cartesian ego,
which is the basis of further concretizations of consciousness and lived experi-
ence, cannot admit that experience can include something that is in principle
unrepresentable. This is the “conflictual in its intimacy” – the very nature of
experience is conflictual and is irreducible to the certitudo grounded in Being
as ιδέα. Verrückung is thus a radical shift away from the very principles of the
familiarity of experience; it is a transformation in what experience means. For
example, dislodged experience does not submit to the Kantian law of the unity
of consciousness, as dislodged experience can’t be reified and brought entirely
under the eye of “I think” (which indicates the certitude of something present
in its belonging to a system of representations). This, however, does not mean
that there are some “unconscious” experiences, but that dislodged experience
is unrelated to consciousness and unconsciousness; it is not a simple case of
presence or absence. To explain how such a “moving out” of representational
consciousness disrupts the rational interpretation of beings, I will present two
characteristics of this shift. These characteristics shall help understanding the
sense of self-concealing and the conflictual pertaining to this move.
First, as we have seen, (the first) Verrückung is an experience of the abandon-
ment of Being, i.e., of the fact that, though beings show themselves, they show
themselves in some sense emptied out of Being, not “fully there.” To be sure,
this is the normal way we experience beings. In the first Verrückung we simply
become aware of this fact. The regular experience of beings presents us with
47 Heidegger ties self-determination as will to power to the need of systemacity. “In dem
so begriffenen Wesensbestand des »Willens« liegt die Notwendigkeit des »Systems« als
der Verfassung der Subjectität, d.h. des Seins selbst als der Seiendheit des Seienden.”
GA 67: 157.

entities of a certain type possessing certain familiar characteristics. In other

words, what we normally experience is the general essence of a thing – I see a
“green tree” which is as “green” and as a “tree” as any other green tree. What I do
not experience is the Being of this tree as it uniquely gives itself at the moment.
Importantly, this is not a mere description of a tree, but how we experience
it – we see it “right away” in general categories. This fact is well investigated
by Plato and Kant and is the core of the rationality of our experience – the
concept, that is, the anticipated general essence of a thing, constitutes the
experience, or better, the way beings are in the experienceable world.48 While
this fact may seem wonderful to Kant, it is in fact a catastrophic blindness to
what shows itself for a moment in the scope of one’s attuned understanding
of Being. This blindness to the uniqueness of temporal phenomena is deter-
mined by reason grounded in the interpretation of Being as ιδέα. It is this
interpretation, as we have seen in the previous section, that enables general a
priori essences, each time concealing beings in their Being and replacing them
with reified essences – the living unfolding of beings is substituted by a lifeless
image of familiar categories and types. Yet, Heidegger writes in Contributions,
were we experiencing Beyng in its uniqueness as event, “[t]here the essence
is not the general but is the essential occurrence precisely of what is unique
in each case and of what constitutes the rank of the being.”49 Accordingly,
the basic sense of difference between the rational lived experience and the
dislodged experience is that normally we do not experience the unique com-
ing to appearance of beings, and experience instead only a diluted shadow
of beings in form of general essences. This unique coming to appearance –
which we “normally” find hard to even imagine – is the way beings continu-
ously occupy a meaningful position within the situation. This position, rather
than being constant and general, is a flowing and qualitatively changing dis-
charge of the strife of earth and world, each moment “being-taken-back into
the self-secluding earth.” While normally the “earthly” side of beings eludes
us, the self-concealing in the heart of dislodged experience pertains precisely
to the conflictual strife in the basis of the uniqueness of what is experienced.
It is not that the experience is somehow “special,” it merely shows for the first
time that this is the genuine way for beings to show themselves, i.e., as an
each time singular phenomenon.50
48 Heidegger stresses that categories of reason, judgements of understanding and rational

thinking, all mean the same thing. See Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 40. Categories
say the “most universal” thing about beings (Ibid., 41).
50 I believe this is what Heidegger means when he says that we do not see that beings are.

390 kuravsky
To be sure, such a uniqueness of experience is incomprehensible for

reason – reason can either think that we experience instances of a general
essence (A1, A2..) or experience each time an entirely different essence (A, B,
C …). As I pointed out in the previous section, reason’s essential relation to the
a priori restricts the sphere of the possible only to what is present, i.e., to what
can become a content of representation. I then defined Verrückung as taking
us beyond the sphere of the (rationally) possible.51 This means that Verrückung
modifies the experience in a way that it cannot be reduced to what is present.
Thus, the uniqueness of the each time manifesting beings cannot be imagined
in terms of some present differences – it is unrepresentable in term of general
essences. That is to say, in dislodged experience beings manifest uniquely not
due to some present qualities, at least not exclusively. Rather, the concealed
“side” of beings is experienced as well, and it contributes to the unique way
beings (each time) come to be. But what does it mean to experience something
that is not present, i.e., the concealed? Reason cannot make sense of it; at most,
reason can think such a concealed side of beings as a horizon of representation
(e.g., Husserl) which is currently not present yet anticipated in order to sustain
the continuity of experience. Yet, the self-concealment of which Heidegger
speaks can neither be represented, nor expected, it is radically strange and
ungraspable by representational thinking. Still, sometimes it is perfectly avail-
able in the actual experience of beings.
To clarify the uniqueness of dislodged experience, it is important to notice
that the uniqueness of beings experienced in their Being is not a merely
perceptual (e.g., visionary) peculiarity. It is not just that beings become live-
lier and fresher, as if we experienced them “for the first time.” As Heidegger
stresses, prior to Verrückung, being-away occurs constantly in a sense of a
denial of the exposure to the truth of Beyng.52 Within the dislodgement, on
the other hand, “it [the openness] comes to be in the first place.” Verrückung
thus opens up the sphere “which allows self-concealing, and thereby beyng, to
occur essentially.”53 Beings do not merely transgress the rational classification
of categories and types – that is still a negative characterization – but shelter
the truth of Beyng, become a vessel for it. Heidegger speaks of the “changed
form of beings” as what affords the shining of Being itself to become visible.54
51 Richard Polt points out as well that, for Heidegger, reason deals only with universals and
thus fails to think historically. Accordingly, the rational argument is not incorrect but sim-
ply superficial. (Richard Polt, The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger’s “Contributions to
Philosophy” (Cornell University Press, 2013), 94).
52 Heidegger, Contributions, 240–241.
53 Ibid., 307.
54 Ibid., 56.

Importantly, this should not be understood in terms of the guiding question

of metaphysics (what are beings?). The changed form of beings here implies
the basic question (of Being) – beings lose their predominance and serve the
shining of Being itself.
Notably, such a changed form of beings is tightly related to the intimation
with the gods. Since the subject of the gods in Heidegger’s thought cannot
be addressed here, we must only briefly point out the relation between the
gods and the manifestation of beings in dislodged experience. As Heidegger
explains in the Parmenides and Heraclitus lectures, the gods are those who
give signs,55 precisely in a sense of revealing-concealing.56 The sign thus fulfills
the “grammar” of the self-concealing pertaining to the clearing. Accordingly,
the uniqueness of beings as those are experienced after Verrückung, in what I
call here dislodged experience, is a uniqueness of a sign – the truth of Beyng
does not show itself as something universally true (i.e., propositional knowl-
edge), but as a sign that I have to read/hear.57 That is to say, the familiar,
epistemologically-scientific experience of beings as entities that can be “seen”
is replaced by an experience in which beings – rephrasing Rudolf Bultmann –
can also be heard.58
The uniqueness of beings thus consists in a momentary appeal, an open-
ing of a unique possibility to answer the call of Beyng through some sort of a
mindful reconfiguration of one’s understanding.
But to experience this is difficult, because beings – familiar and forgot-

ten at the same time – have overgrown being and now brace themselves
55 Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, translated by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz

(Indiana University Press, 1992), 104.
56 Heidegger, Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking and, Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine
of the Logos, translated by Julia Goesser Assaiante and S. Montgomery Ewegen (Blooms
bury Academic, 2018), 134.
57 The sign here is a verrückt sign. Namely, it does not refer to something “behind” it, is not a
hint “about” something else, but a hint into Beyng.
58 Rudolf Bultmann describes what he calls religiously existential encounter in the following
terms: “In the scientific relation to the object, my reception of it becomes purely passive,
that is, a purely receptive, disinterested seeing in contradistinction to the hearing that
attends to what the object may have to say to me about my own personal life.” Bultmann
“Science and Existence.” In New Testament & Mythology and Other Basic Writings, edited
by Schubert M. Ogden, 131–144 (Fortress Press, 1984), 132. The only term in this descrip-
tion that might be problematic for Heidegger is “personal life.” Though one’s life is indeed
personal, it is so not in the sense of a subjectively closed region of representations, but in
a sense of a unique belonginess to Beyng.

392 kuravsky
against being without letting being count’ as ‘more’ than an empty, unde-
terminable concept.59
To let Being count again, the ontic-ontological restriction must be removed

from experience through a dislodgement out of the metaphysical mode of
human existence. While in lived experience beings are “too much of ‘a being’,”60
that is too real in terms of their effective power and actuality, that which is
beyond power, namely Beyng, becomes “unreal” and either ignored or labeled
as “subjective.” Indeed, to experience beings as a sign is for a modern scientific
thought a subjective frivolity at best and a psychological pathology at worst.
Dislodged experience, on the other hand, frees human beings from anthro-
pology by illuminating for the first time that what is too easily rendered as
merely subjective (or ontic) can in fact belong to Beyng as its hint – the “not
so real” event of a momentary meaningfulness can be ontologically indicative
of the nearness of the ab-ground.61 To become ready for Verrückung, I believe,
demands the difficult work of being attentive to such moments.
The second characteristic of the way Verrückung shatters the regular sense of
experience is no less destructive for the representational model bound by rea-
son. Namely, it shall illustrate that in dislodged experience it is not only hard to
determine what we experience (as discussed above) but even who is the owner
of an experience. The idea is that dislodged experience is de-centralized, i.e., is
dis-lodged from the subject-object schema of lived experience; it undoes for-
ever the subject-object dualism.62 Without this characteristic of experience,
the discussed manifestation of beings as a sign would be simply schizophrenic.
Namely, the truth of Beyng can show itself to me in a form of an address only
if I and my experiences also belong to Beyng and are not really “mine” or “per-
sonal” in the regular sense of belonging to the interiority of the subject.
One way to access this characteristic of dislodged experience is to ask what
it means that Verrückung first opens up the sphere wherein the truth of Beyng
becomes visible. The openness, Heidegger says, comes to be with the dislodge-
ment. This however does not mean that we are “doing” the opening, as when
we are opening a box or a bank account. To “cause” the opening would mean a

60 Ibid.
61 As I have mentioned in the previous section, the truth of Beyng can only be experienced
if language is released from its exclusively metaphysical manifestation and is “returned”
to its poietic essence. Accordingly, there is a direct relation between the words (Worte) of
poietic language and the signs given by the gods.
62 Keneth Maly, Five Ground-breaking Moments in Heidegger’s Thinking (University of Toronto
Press, 2020), 41.

subjective intervention in the way things are. Instead, Heidegger presents the
“activity” of the self in dislodged experience as “self-withholding.” The German
term is Sichversagen and it can be read as a peculiar failure (versagen) of the
self, a breakdown of a “self-ish” or “self-ly” attitude to experience. Such a with-
holding of the self, according to Heidegger, is not a breakdown into a self-less
chaos but is the basis of Verrückung in its various nuances and is what I take
to be the main factor separating the overcoming of reason from the madness
of sheer groundlessness. It is a dislodgement as a dropping-into (Ein-fall) the
“between” (i.e., Da-sein) wherein the true selfhood can first be found.63 As
Heidegger writes in Contributions,
The “staying away” as (hesitant) self-withholding of the ground is the

essential occurrence of the ground as abyssal ground. The ground needs
the abyssal ground. Furthermore, the clearing which occurs in the self-
withholding is not a mere gaping hole or chasm (χάος – versus φύσις); it
is the attuned disposing of the essential dis-lodgments (Ver-rückungen)
of precisely this cleared being which allows such self-concealing to stand
within it.64
The self-withholding is not nothing, Heidegger writes, but a kind of opening-

up as leaving unfulfilled.65 To free experience from its metaphysical oppo-
sition to Beyng, we must read the self-withholding both in a sense of the
self-withholding of the refusal of Beyng and the self-withholding pertaining
to the dislodged experience of Beyng. The self-concealment in the heart of
dislodged experience is not a gap between representations or a lack of abil-
ity to keep one’s feet on the ground of reason but – as discussed above – is a
staying-away from the a priori determination of what counts as a ground. In
thus leaving the sense of ground unfulfilled it remains open. This experience of
openness requires a peculiar withstanding against the pull of representational
reason and thus constitutes a dislodged ground (that is why it is “hard”). The
Abgrund Heidegger says is Abgrund, that is, a sort of abyssal ground after all.
Importantly, to say that dislodged experience entails an experience of open-
ness does not mean that openness is represented. Such a representation would
enclose openness on its own terms, thus precisely canceling its open charac-
ter. Rather, the self-concealing in the heart of dislodged experience breaks
down one’s self-positing as a solid center of experience; that is, as the center

64 Ibid., 301.
65 Ibid., 300.

394 kuravsky
in relation to which it is always already decided what counts as an experience

(what enters consciousness). In other words, rather than being simply chaotic
and unreasonable, dislodged experience lets beings come into the open with-
out subjectivizing them to the structure of representability. Accordingly, dis-
lodged experience is not subjective but should be thought similarly to the way
Heidegger insinuates a more original sense of experience in his analysis of
the German word “erfahren.” “The ‘fahren’ in ‘erfahren’ has the original mean-
ing of going, of drawing or being drawn somewhere.”66 By staying away of the
ground, dislodged experience is hesitant as it is drawn into the open, yet since
it is not separate from the open, it is this very drawing itself; it is both the draw-
ing and the drawn.
Perhaps a brief phenomenological example from Mamardashvili can help
solidify the point. Mamardashvili points out that in a thought “process” we
experience ourselves moving from thought A to thought B, arriving finally at
the conclusion C. The problem however is that the content of C does not really
follow from the fact that it was preceded by A and B.67 It would follow only in
a voluntary movement in which we start from point A and are guaranteed to
arrive at B (and then C). For example, if I move towards a fixed chair (A), and
then sit on it (B), it necessary follows that I am sitting on it in the end of the
process (C). However, this is not how it works in thinking and understanding.
Namely, one cannot voluntarily arrive at some thought, even if one makes all the
steps.68 This fact is easier to see when one tries to explain a thought to someone
who just won’t get it.69 Yet, as Mamardashvili stresses, this is how all thought
and understanding work. What happens in the thought “process” is irreduc-
ible to a representable sequence of ideas – understanding either happens or
not. In other words, there is a gap between what is thought at moment A and
what is thought at the next moment. The so called “insight” is ungrounded if
viewed formally; indeed, it is abyssal. In other words, understanding happens;
66 Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Concept of Experience, translated by Kenley Royce Dove (Harper
collins, 1989), 139.
67 Мамардашвили, Психологическая топология пути (М.: Фонд Мераба Мамардашвили,
2014), 133.
68 “It has not been established by anyone in advance, not only by man, but also by God,
who will know and understand something – this is a very important, fundamental
thing.” Ibid., 193.
69 In the early 1920s Heidegger spoke about the relation and enactment senses of experi-
ence which can be different despite the similarity of the content sense. This early schema
can clarify the independence of understanding from acquired knowledge. I discuss it
elsewhere (Erik Kuravsky, “Neither Philosophy nor Theology: The Origin in Heidegger’s
Earliest Thought,” Open Theology, vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, pp. 180–207. https://doi.org/10.1515
/opth-2020-0159).

its ground is not just concealed but is the self-concealing protruding within
the clearing. In terms of Heidegger’s Contributions, the gaps in meaning are
“filled” by self-withdrawal, as it allows thinking and experience in general to
be incessant. The gap pointed out by Mamardashvili that can in principle be
noticed by anyone, is not a gap “between” representations but is a moment of
self-concealment, a sundering that positively determines thinking as belong-
ing to Beyng rather than being executed by an encapsulated will of the subject.
Rather than anthropologizing Beyng, an illumination of dislodged experience’s
self-withholding points out that all anthropology based on psychological sub-
jectivity is delusionary. That is to say, by noticing that Beyng’s “characteristic”
of self-withholding applies to thinking, we do not conflate the ontological and
the ontic levels but reveal that a “purely ontic experience” is impossible, or
at least, can nowhere be found. The difficult task of preparing oneself for a
dislodgement is to be attentive to this already available character of thinking.
This is, however, not a reflective thinking “about” thinking but a “venture after
sense or meaning” as a “self-possessed surrender to that which is worthy of
questioning.”70
Such questioning is not an ontic, subjective endeavor, but a mode of let-
ting oneself be led into the open, leaving behind the unquestionability of the
psychological subject. As Heidegger writes in the last section of Contributions,
language dehumanizes human beings from being a “subject” and an “objec-
tively present living being.”71 Since, “language” here pertains to the very poietic
unfolding of the occurrence of Beyng and can be experienced in its essence
only when our experience is dislodged, we may conclude that what I presented
as a de-centralization of experience can also be named a de-humanization of
experience. Accordingly, the shock of the first Verrückung is also a shock of
discovering a quite confusing fact that my experience is the drawing-drawn
movement within the open and that even my thoughts are not “mine” in the
usual sense of a subjective possession. As Heidegger stresses, “[t]hinking is not
an independent activity over against Being.”72 Yet thinking is also not some-
thing detached from experience. On the contrary, what Heidegger looks for is
a “thoughtful experience,” a “mindfulness” that is different from “lived experi-
ence” yet is surely not something external to experience.
The example of thinking also helps understanding the de-centralized sense
of de-cision in Contributions. Just as thinking is not a voluntary process of
70 Martin Heidegger, “Science and Reflection,” in The Question Concerning Technology and
Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (Garland Publishing, 1977), 155:182, 180.
72 Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 216.

396 kuravsky
lining up representations but happens to us, so is de-cision not a carried-out

procedure.73 Instead, it is an appropriation of the gap, i.e., of the sundering
(“cision”) in the basis of experience, determining beings out of the essence
of Beyng.74 That is, it is not a choice of something present, but a dislodged
reconfiguration of one’s attention75 in a way that lets the conflictual and the
self-concealing nature of thinking become explicit. Such a reconfiguration
does require our participation – just as thinking does – but cannot be caused.
Still, it cannot be separated entirely from our commonsense experience of
attention. One must make efforts to be attentive in order for attention to hap-
pen, just as one must make efforts to think (e.g., by questioning Being) in order
for thinking to happen. In both cases, however, the “decision” of whether we
succeed belongs to Beyng itself. We may only offer a contribution, a sacrifice
of our self-security and hope that through this effort we will be able to hear
the call of Beyng, which means also to see beings as a sign so that the truth
of Beyng could be experienced for a moment and our thrownness into the
“there” could be witnessed. A road towards what Heidegger calls “steadfastness
in Dasein” must be paved by collecting such moments. A preparation for the
“final” dislodgement is only possible by means of a mindful attentiveness to
the sparks of experience’s inherent “dislodgedness.”
4 Conclusion
In this paper I suggested that Heidegger’s usage of the term Verrückung

in Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) insinuates a radical shift in the

74 Ibid., 71.
75 “Attention” should not be taken in modern cognitive (i.e., metaphysical) terms. Coming
from the Latin ad-tendere, attention is a “stretch toward” and is usually understood as a
stretch toward something present. A verrückt notion, on the other hand, means stretch-
ing not towards what is present, and not even toward what is given, but towards the
very happening of givenness (of Being). Such an attentiveness is the basis of Heidegger’s
notion of mindfulness (Besinnung). This attention underlies the meaning of Heidegger’s
idea of “hearing.” As I understand it, one’s explicit belonginess to the open as an expe-
rience of the open can only last as long as one is able to sustain the “hearing” attention
to Being. Such an attention overcomes the regular sense of agency since it is the basis
of the each time unconcealed sense of what an agency would mean in this particular
moment. See Erik Kuravsky, “Attentiveness as an Ontological Practice in Mamardashvili
and Heidegger.” Circolo Rivista di Filosofia e Culture, vol. 13, 2022, pp. 90:110. https://www
.incircolorivistafilosofica.it/attentiveness-as-an-ontological-practice-inmamardashvili-and-
heidegger/.

nature of experience as one moves from the “normal” experience founded on

the metaphysical principles of Western philosophy to Da-Sein. I presented
this move as an overcoming of reason in its ontological sense determining the
meaning of Being in terms of the a priori (ιδέα). Since this ontological model
entails a model of experience as a subjective representation of what is present
and possible according to a priori principles, an overcoming of reason is an
overcoming of this model of experience. Based on Heidegger’s ideas, I have
offered a positive account of Verrückung as an alternative mode of experience.
This other, dislodged mode of experience allows beings to give themselves
uniquely each time in a way that the truth of Beyng can be seen in them as
a sign or a hint that requires something from me, giving me a chance to let
the truth of Beyng be sheltered in beings and to gather my self in a way that
cannot be immediately represented by an “I.” Moreover, the dislodged mode
of experience transgresses the subject-object dichotomy as it illuminates the
de-centralized (and thus de-humanized) nature of experience in general and
thinking in particular.
A shift to such a mode of experience is what Heidegger calls the “first
Verrückung.” I have interpreted it as a suffering of a confusing experience of
overcoming reason, that is of the fact that the “normal” mode of represen-
tational experience neither present beings in their Being, nor affords me to
makes sense of the attitude of self-withholding which alone can let me ground
my self in the truth of Beyng. Verrückung in the sense Heidegger speaks about
in Contributions is not madness but is a transformation of reasonableness itself
beyond the rule of reason. Namely, Verrückung is not a rejection of reason but
an overcoming of its metaphysical, or as Heidegger says, corrupted, mode. In
fact, Heidegger writes in the Contributions about the possibility of another rea-
son grounded in Being.76 Importantly, such a transformation of reason is a rad-
ical shift beyond the model of representational experience and is thus itself an
experience. As I have argued, this experience is sometimes phenomenologically
available in our everyday life, yet it requires a specific kind of attention, freed
from metaphysical presuppositions. Such an attention already transgresses
the metaphysical version of the abstract nature of ontological difference – it
is a basis of the experience of the ontological difference. As Heidegger stresses,
we can ask the decisive question correctly (regarding the meaning of Being)
only “if [we] have first experienced in a more meaningful way what we have
termed the ‘differentiation of Being and beings.’77 The unreliability of images,

77 Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol4: Nihilism, 187.

398 kuravsky
Heidegger says, should not “keep us from the experience of what we call the
differentiation.”78
The characteristics of what I presented here as dislodged experience may
seem in-sane in terms of representational rationality. Yet, these characteris-
tics insinuate a more reasonable position among beings as they pertain to the
experience of the ontological difference itself. Namely, what I presented as
an experience of the uniqueness of each time manifesting beings is also the
experience of the uniqueness of Beyng as it shows itself against and in spite of
what is common to experienceable beings. The de-centralization of experience
also presents the ontological difference by allowing the self-refusal of Beyng to
co-constitute the experience, thus allowing me to experience my belonginess
to Beyng as the very “tissue” that constitutes the gapless inconsistency of my
thinking process. Dis-lodgement re-grounds one’s self by overcoming reason
in its degraded metaphysical sense, thus allowing a new kind of (ab)ground
on which it can fully rely. It is possible only since the center of gravity of the
experience has shifted from the subject and her forms of representability.
In this light, I think that an overcoming of the ontological difference, which
Heidegger’s initiates in Contributions, points toward a different sense of expe-
rience. Such an experience can be seen as a phenomenological expression of
Beyng as it incorporates the belonginess of human beings to Beyng. Though
Heidegger refers to a need of such an experience in many places (e.g., as an
experience of the event, of the truth of Beyng etc.), modern scholarship tends
to undermine this experiential element of Beyng itself and view any allusions
to human experience as a confusion between the ontic and the ontological.
I tried to show that such suspicions are fair only if we take for granted an
ungrounded understanding of what experience is. That is, an experiential data
is merely ontic only if “experience” is thought on the basis of beings, the way
Heidegger still thinks it in his earlier works. What I discussed here as dislodged
experience, can, on the other hand, open a way to a phenomenology of Beyng,
which rather than postulating metaphysical structures abstracted from a
familiar mode of experience, aims at re-thinking experience itself from Beyng.
78 Ibid., 188.


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Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398 Research

Dislodged Experience as an Overcoming of Reason:

Erik Kuravsky | ORCID: 0000-0002-8365-5496

Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy approaches human transformation as an

Contributions to Philosophy – dislodgement – overcoming of metaphysics – reason –

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/15691640-12341506

In Heidegger’s Contributions the term “Verrückung” – translated by Richard

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

a different understanding of what experience means.8 Accordingly, to speak

2 Verrückung as Overcoming Reason

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as such and it can be best described as an overcoming of reason. To be sure,

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

sense of “ratio.”13 Such a “rational” thinking, Heidegger writes, “remains pri-

Yet how are human beings supposed to be dislodged (verrückt) out of

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2022 12:15:38PM

Dasein’s thrownness. Thrownness, rather than indicating mere contingency of Dasein’s

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

reason’s self-exaltation to a position of a measure-setting subjectivity, deciding

The configuration of human essence as already determined accompanies a par-

18 As Heidegger explains, “sub-jectum” is that which “under-lies and lies-at-the-base-of,

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2022 12:15:38PM

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

Verrückung, the overcoming of reason constitutes the very experiential dimen-

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2022 12:15:38PM

‘Possibility’ is meant here as ‘enabling’ the essence as the reality of the

The “possibility problem,” as seen by Heidegger, concerns the restriction of

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

human existence in which Being is interpreted as an a priori form of represent-

3 Verrückung as a Different Mode of Experience

In the previous section, I presented an interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of

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what I call dislodged experience must entails a different sense of “experience.”

36 Heidegger opposed consciousness and lived experience to Dasein (Heidegger, Contri­

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

because we experience something ambiguous, but because the very sense of

Verrückung is grasped here as a move out (auszurücken) from the indetermi-

42 Heidegger, Contributions, 276.

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distinction. In this light, I am convinced that the self-concealing belonging to

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

entities of a certain type possessing certain familiar characteristics. In other

48 Heidegger stresses that categories of reason, judgements of understanding and rational

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To be sure, such a uniqueness of experience is incomprehensible for

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

Importantly, this should not be understood in terms of the guiding question

But to experience this is difficult, because beings – familiar and forgot-

55 Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, translated by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz

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To let Being count again, the ontic-ontological restriction must be removed

59 Heidegger, Mindfulness, 80.

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The “staying away” as (hesitant) self-withholding of the ground is the

The self-withholding is not nothing, Heidegger writes, but a kind of opening-

63 Heidegger, Contributions, 258.

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in relation to which it is always already decided what counts as an experience

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lining up representations but happens to us, so is de-cision not a carried-out

In this paper I suggested that Heidegger’s usage of the term Verrückung

73 Heidegger, Contributions, 69.

Research in Phenomenology 52 (2022) 375–398

36 Heidegger opposed consciousness and lived experience to Dasein (Heidegger, Contri