Abstract

Catherine Malabou’s groundbreaking interpretation of Heidegger in her book The Heidegger Change provides an occasion to suggest strong parallels between Heideggerian and Daoist/Buddhist ontologies. In her imaginative reading of Heidegger, Malabou comes close to a Buddhist/Daoist conception of change: the metamorphosed Dasein is a daoist Dasein. Here an attempt is made to think together presence, in its Buddhist sense revealed by way of satori, and presencing, in its Heideggerian sense, that is, the sense that there is no foundation beyond the epochal play of the concealing and revealing of being. Presence and presencing refer to granularity in the mode of eternity and temporality, respectively. These two modes, which are not-two, interpervade. The self-givenness of being oscillates between these two modes, hence its ambiguity since by nature this oscillation is a transparent-non-transparent process. There is really no oscillation between two distinct and separate modes or poles. The poles are always-already intertwined. Given this, within the context of Malabou’s reading of Heidegger, the originary mutability, or oscillation, of there is/it gives is analysed and the implications of such an analysis for the meaning of schooling are explored.