Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 13:30:05 +0200
Subject: Medium


Cologne 10-Apr-2001

Jan Straathof schrieb Tue, 10 Apr 2001 00:20:11 +0100:

> dear Paul,
>
> the issues you raise here are quite interesting, and made me think
> back to the question Michael Staples asked more than a year ago
> about the trinity: Language - Thought - Action (and its related
> notions as: non-language, demi-language; non-thought, demi-thought;
> in/non-action, demi-action etc.)
>
> yes indeed, the relevance of this trinity-complex to the understanding
> of Heidegger's "Gelassenheit" (but also Wittgenstein's "Verhexung"
> PU:109) is to the point and paramount
>
> a practical question that arises now is: can we reclaim (regain)
> the middle verb tense ? and, if so, how ? --- and would this then
> be a learning proces ? and if so, ought it then be conceive primary
> as an individual learning proces or more as a form of social learning ?
> (i guess that learning ancient Greek or Sanskrit isn't enough or even
> necessary here)
>
> how would it be done to show someone the meaning of the middle
> verb tense: we need a good example here to think this through ....
>
> yours,
> Jan
>

Jan,
I wouldn't make too much of the medium voice 'between' the active and
passive voices in Greek for its meaning is by no means clear and definite,
but subtle and varying. The distinction goes back to the Alexandrian
grammarians who developed the first Western grammar -- implicitly on the
basis of Aristotelean metaphysics. All grammar is highly metaphysical.

The medium voice certainly has a definite form in Greek, but it does not
seem to signify in general that the 'subject' is the 'medium' for the
action of the verb. Guenther Zuntz (_Griechischer Lehrgang_ Goettingen
1991), whose knowledge of Greek is profound, writes for instance (my
translation):

"Active voice communicates a fact or activity as an objective fact; medium
voice indicates in addition a personal involvement of the subject or some
other special relation to the subject. If this relation consists in the
circumstance that the subject is itself affected by the action (that is, is
'direct object' of the action), grammarians call this structure 'passive'.
...
e.g. _luo_ - 'I free, liberate' (active)
_luomai_ - 'I am freed, liberated (passive)
_luomai ton paida_ - '(From personal interest and involvement) I free my
son' (medium)
...
The reason why active or medial forms are used is not always clear...
Ultimately it may be confirmed that the essential difference was not
between active and passive but between the 'objective' active and the
'subjective' medium." (Band III S.114f)

Zuntz, of course, uses metaphysical terms to describe the different forms,
which, in turn, could be questioned (as Heidegger has done, say, in
_Introduction to Metaphysics_ 1935).

As far as Gelassenheit or thinking goes, one could say perhaps that it is
the medium or the dimension in which openness takes place or thinking
thinks its thoughts which is prior and allows the thinker and the thought
to belong to each other. The medium is then not a middle between subject
and object, but rather the encompassing, enabling medium.

Gruss
Michael
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