Disclosedness and illumination: Dasein as an illuminated entity: contributions to Martin Heidegger’s «Being and Time» from the perspective of the clearing of Being

Abstract

As a twentieth-century thinker, Heidegger could not dissociate himself from the ancient, metaphysical, and markedly Platonic tradition that sought to clarify why things are or are not. In Sein und Zeit, the word Lichtung is understood as the «light of Being», an expression close to the Platonic and therefore metaphysical tradition. This light has a purpose: it must be directed toward the truth (alétheia) of Being. The «light of Being», necessarily linked to a supposed ontological truth, follows the principles of Husserl’s phenomenological methodology. Specifically, it is postulated as the only ontological means capable of revealing the principles of visibility itself. Consequently, in Sein und Zeit, Lichtung is translated as the «illumination of Being» and receives its first theoretical definition as the illumination of Dasein.