Event and subject

Abstract

In Heidegger’s phenomenology, an event concerns the ontology of experience. The event is not merely an occurrence in my world, but the point from which my world is constituted. The event does not relate to any ontic reality, but the coming about of reality, the presence and “presencing” of Being itself. One problem arising here is that this cannot be described in experiential terms: the event is appearance which itself does not appear. To be able to describe the experience of the ontological coming about of reality, I propose considering the idea of the event as presenting me with an involuntary aspect of my experience. While the appearance of things is grasped by me as a subject, consciously experiencing them and being able to reflect on them, at the same time the appearing of that appearance confronts me with the fact of having experiences, reformulating the event in subjective terms.