Transclude of 66bfb3a514734cd56147e076#chirality
Fascinating to think of this property of chemical / molecular structure as a figure for the relationship between Zuhandenheit in division one of Being and Time . Or, more generally, in terms of ontic-ontological difference and its many reformulations throughout Heidegger’s late writings. I’ve always seen Vorhandenheit / Zuhandenheit as an exploration of the latter from a distinctly spatial perspective (although I can’t recall at the moment what the exact temporal (division two) analogs for these would be … but, probably something that plays on the presence of the present as a moment versus the coming-to-presence that he explores through the Abwesen cluster.
This idea of being symmetrical but not superimposable has all sorts of affinities with the Derrida, de Man, et al, as well. Could easily be used to express the problem of irreducibility in general.
The fittingness of the figure of the hand for Heidegger in particular though, seems the most interesting. After all, around these critical epicenters of ex-centricity and critique one can always analogize anything with with anything else. The idea of chirality for Heidegger though, fits hand in glove.1
Especially in the way that the duality of the ontic-ontological perspectives, through the lens of the later seminars at least, appears to be nothing of the sort. That is, distinctly not a difference of to divisible vantage points on experience and certainly not a contrast between some phenomenal pseudotruth and an elevated philosophical ‘understanding’. But rather an originary event (Ereignis) that breaks and binds them into an historical being.2
Footnotes
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Cf. Derrida’s Geschlecht (series) especially Heidegger’s Handfind1 ↩
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Cf. this breaking and binding dynamic with Heidegger’s discussion of Riss which has certain affinities Shakespeare’s [[66bfc02b2a2cb0656904b58c|“it wears […] as it grows”]] or ↩