The Error in our Ways: Twofold Errancy in Heidegger’s References to Dao

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the connection between Martin Heidegger’s concepts of ‘errancy’ and the ‘way.’ This connection provides important clarity to Heidegger’s project, as it helps to explain how the ineffable, unfolding ‘way’ could serve as both the possibility for a new way of thinking and the withdrawal that gives rise to the very reign of method that covers over this possibility. Regarding errancy, this paper distinguishes two senses in which the term is engaged: (1) the inescapable openness of Being that allows for untruth, and (2) the tendency of this open region to efface and forget the fact of its own openness. Drawing from Heidegger’s discussions on the dao, I argue that this twofold errancy is central to Heidegger’s concept of the way. In order to clarify this connection, I introduce the term ‘lostness,’ hearkening back loosely to its application in Being and Time (1927). In my new application, lostness evokes the impossibility of ‘finding’ truth along some ‘right path.’ Any such goal of ‘finding’ the way is emblematic of the twofold errancy of contemporary thought because it forgets that no such path could exist independently of its middle-voiced arising between the way-making of the human being and the way-making of Being itself. As such, lostness points out the errancy in contemporary way-making, and clarifies the possibility of ‘overcoming’ this metaphysical pattern of thought. In short, we must realize the fundamental ‘lostness’ of the way and reevaluate what the process of ‘finding our way’ would even look like