Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 16:51:49 +0200
Subject: Re: To Edward Moore, Doctor Eldred, or whoever else may know about


Cologne, Friday 13th Apr-2001

Stuart Elden schrieb Thu, 12 Apr 2001 11:55:29 +0100:

> Gary
>
> Helen S Lang, Aristotle's Physics and Its Medieval Varieties (SUNY Press,
> 1992) might be useful. She discusses Philoponus, Albertus Magnus, Thomas,
> Buridan and Duns Scotus. It's a book Laurence Hemming suggested to me a
> while back, which I've only just got round to looking at. I think she has
> some other work on similar issues.
>
> Of Heidegger on Aristotle, you presumably know the essays and lecture
> courses translated into English (GA19 and GA33 being the most important),
> but there are several only in German, and a piece which might be harder to
> find -
> "Phaenomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristotles (Anzeige der
> hermeneutischen Situation)", Dilthey-Jahrbuch fuer Philosophie und
> Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften, Bd. 6, 1989. There is an English
> translation by Michael Baur, "Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect
> to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutic Situation", in Man and World,
> Vol 25, 1992. I found the Dilthey-Jahrbuch difficult to find, but there is a
> good French-German edition, Interpretations Phenomenologiques d'Aristote,
> Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1992.
>
> I'd agree with Michael's suggestion that the Physics and the Metaphysics
> were key, but i'd stress more how important the Nicomachean Ethics is.
> Reading GA19 along with Being and Time is very interesting in seeing how
> many notions develop from Heidegger's reading of this text. Kisiel's Genesis
> of B&T should be useful here, and more generally on the reading of
> Aristotle. The reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric in the previous semester's
> course (to be GA18) is, according to Kisiel, central in understanding the
> attitude to politics pre B&T.
>
> Finally, i could mention my own forthcoming piece which begins with a
> discussion of GA19 - "The Place of Geometry: Heideggers Mathematical
> Excursus on Aristotle", The Heythrop Journal, Vol XLII No 3, July 2001.
>
> Stuart

Stuart,
Congratulations! Did you change much from the version I read?

On Heidegger's reading of the Eth. Nic. you may find the following comment by
Gadamer instructive or even eye-opening. It comes from his introduction to
Heidegger's 1922 overview of his "Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle"
which you mention, a lost manuscript that was rediscovered and published in the
Dilthey Jahrbuch in 1989 (my translation):

"On reading the refound program, I was surprised to find that in Heidegger's
manuscript, phronesis does not come so much to the fore, but rather the virtue
of theoretical life, sophia. This means that at that time the young Heidegger
was preoccupied more by the significance of practical philosophy for
Aristotelean ontology, the Metaphysics, than today's relevance of practical
philosophy itself. The sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics appears in this
programmatic text properly speaking more as an introduction into the
Aristotelian Physics. " (H.-G. Gadamer, 'Heideggers 'theologische'
Jugendschrift' in: _Dilthey-Jahrbuch_ Band 6/1989, S.231)

"... What struck me most on the whole is the preponderance of the ontological
interest which is apparent also in the entire phronesis analysis, so that the
concept of 'ethos' is hardly mentioned at all in the programmatic text. Ethos,
however, is precisely that which is not enlightenment [Erhellung], but
habituation. Heidegger had certainly recognized habituation in his analysis of
the facticity of life as constitutive, but characterized it as the inclination
of life to decline/deteriorate [verfallen]. It appears therefore not so much in
the enlightening of Dasein but rather in its distortion and obscuring, against
which the exertion of thinking must direct itself in order to become transparent
to itself. One sees how Heidegger consistently pursues his path when he tries
again and again to bring to light from Aristotle and with Aristotelean means how
the facticity of human life stands behind the thinking of metaphysics opened up
by Aristotle. The true midpoint of Aristotelean thinking for Heidegger is the
Physics. Its subject is the being of motion, and not the Platonic-Pythagorean
'ideality' of mathematical laws of order. The being of motion is the guiding
thread. ..." (S.233)

This would seem to hint at the dilemma of philosophy _per se_, i.e. that there
is an ontological gravity in everyday life weighing on any exertion of thinking
to gain clarity for itself. Insights gained in thinking are short-lived,
ephemeral, and the weight of habit, custom, tradition overwhelms the clarity of
insight, both individually and especially in any collectivity. Just take a look,
for instance, at how courts of so-called justice establish the so-called 'truth'
of a matter. The Aristotelean distinction between sophia and phronesis takes
account of the impossibility of whiling in a state of philosophical insight,
whereas Plato (and Heidegger), against all the odds of ontological inertia,
radically opts for the transparency of wisdom (sophia). No wonder that both
Plato and Heidegger came to grief in practical life on the rocky shores of
politics.

Michael
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