I said Ereignis means "event" through much of Heidegger's work, not at all. Indeed, certain texts speculate on its etymology but do not propose a new technical term. Being and Time (51-52) speaks of death as an event. What could it possibly mean to call death an appropriation?

And Heidegger certainly does not mean that death is "emergence into intelligibility." On the contrary. Also, Being and Time outlines a philosophy of history in which Heidegger often refers to past events. It is ironic that Sheehan, who is so concerned with dating texts, should not realize that the early Heidegger understands Ereignis literally. For a later Heideggerian usage consult the Afterword to "What is Metaphysics?" where product and event (Erzeugnis and Ereignis) are distinguished. Finally, in those passages where Heidegger does attempt to ramify the sense of Ereignis by comments on aneignen and eräugen (e.g., in Identität und Differenz), he plays on the tension between the unreflective normal sense of the term and his etymological sense. Understanding these passages means keeping both in mind, and Heidegger underscores this fact by writing Er-eignis when he wishes to stress his etymological sense. He wants to emphasize that genuine historical events are changes in mentality and the understanding of the world, and not mere happenstance.

To indiscriminately substitute "appropriation" wherever Heidegger utters Ereignis, as Sheehan seems to propose, is to produce the sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo with which Heidegger is all too often and wrongly associated. Or should we also translate Begebenheit as "be-givenness"?

Willis Domingo

The word metabole is employed by Aristotle in his definition of peripety (Poet. 1452a 22-23), which Anton F. Harald Bierl, Dionysos und die griechische Tragödie.1991) regards as somehow connected with Dionysus.

He is tempted by the thought that Aristotle borrowed it from the poets, or at least that it belonged to a dramaturgical vocabulary that had already sprung up by the time of HF (143 n. 88, 225). This word, Bierl thinks, signals metatragically the critical moment when the action is about to take a sudden turn (it does just that at the conclusion of the third stasimon, 815ff.). The mad Heracles is characterized in Dionysiac imagery (esp. 889-98, just before he kills his children). According to Bierl, Heracles unites the two sides of Dionysus: he reflects the positive, cultic side of the god in the first half of the play, where he is the embodiment of Bacchic hope in the eyes of his loved ones, and the negative, mythical side in the second half, where he becomes their murderer.

In sum, an evocation of the Dionysus in his theatrical dimension might

(a) serve as a dramaturgical signal, a device to prepare the audience for a subsequent turn of events. It might

(b) induce the audience to experience vicariously the optimism of the dramatis personae (e.g. of the chorus in Sophocles' plays) by calling forth the "positive" cultic context. It might

(c) call attention to the operation of tragedy, especially the sudden reversal, which Aristotle called peripety; theatrical metalanguage (e.g. metabole [HF 735], eleos and phrike [Phoen. 1284-87], phroimion [HF 753]) can suggest the tragic principle of sudden reversal. Finally, it might (d) cause the audience to reflect on the theatrical illusion (Hel., cf. Cho., IT) or on the value of the theater for the polis (Bacch. does this by dramatizing, through the monitory example of Pentheus, the breakdown of theatrical communication).

L'émotion esthétique naît nécessairement d'une rencontre, d'une occurrence adéquate à la manière du surprenant sentiment amoureux, pour finir par se confondre avec elle.

Or la rencontre fortuite ne doit pas être mise en valeur du seul et simple fait de sa fortuité. Au contraire, ce qui étonne en elle et produit la réflexion philosophique, c'est que, fortuite en son origine, elle soit d'un coup productrice de beauté ; dès lors son résultat apparait sous le signe inattendu d'une finalité dont nous savons pourtant bien qu'elle n'a pas présidé à sa naissance.

Si l'on pose de nouveau l'éternelle question platonicienne de l'étonnement et de l'inspiration (Phèdre), on voit encore ici que, chez le poète, l'illumination ne naît pas d'un coup d'un seul comme par enchantement. Elle semble bien succéder à la création.

On sait que Breton s'est, en ce sens, élevé contre le prétendu pouvoir visionnaire du poète : « Non, écrit-il dans Les pas perdus, Lautréamont, Rimbaud n'ont pas vu, n'ont pas joui a priori de ce qu'ils décrivaient, ce qui équivaut à dire qu'ils ne le décrivaient pas ; ils se bornaient dans les coulisses sombres de l'être à entendre parler indistinctement et, durant qu'ils écrivaient, sans mieux comprendre que nous la première fois que nous les lisons, de certains travaux accomplis et accomplissables. L'illumination vient ensuite ».