History as Decision and Event in Heidegger

Abstract

Th is paper explores Martin Heidegger’s critique of previous approaches tohistory, his diff erentiation of history as object of inquiry and temporal enactment, andhis attempt in the late 1930’s to engage the past and rethink history from an inherentlyfutural—and not merely subjectively or objectively grounded—decision and “enowningevent” (Ereignis). Works of history are neither simply factual nor socially constructedfor Heidegger but exhibit a hermeneutical or communicative event of disclosure—viaunderstanding, interpretation, and appropriation—and concealment in relation to thefacticity and possibilities of historical existence.