Abstract

It is always difficult to speak of raw being, because in doing so there is always risk present that we also domesticate it. Perhaps the only possible way of doing this is offered in poetry, which is understood by Heidegger as an access to the origin. In view of its polymorphism and shapelessness, Merleau-Ponty's raw being is always unwholesome, that is to say opened to infinite number of horizons. Perhaps we could even say that the raw being is some kind of openness itself. It is also difficult to localize it due to its promiscuity and polymorphism. We are fumbling after it in the region of pre-reflection, where there is but dimness and shapelessness. Every shape is always already a result of the preceding institutionalization, which is socially and historically determined. It is a kind of framework or an institution of visibility determined by the actual society. It is only in this sphere that every object becomes visible. Accordingly, every shape or form is arbitrary, accidental and coincidental. Beyond this framework, it has no reasonableness. To reach the raw being, which is actually out of reach, would mean to go beyond all the frameworks and margins and barriers set up by culture. As if we were placed in that Artaud's moment, when we were not yet born, when the world itself was not yet born and no thing was made or meaning of life found