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Whose Metaphysics of Presence?
The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2006) Vol. XLIV
Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heideggers Interpretation of Energeia and Dunamis in Aristotle

Francisco J. Gonzalez Skidmore College
Abstract
In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie , Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotles definition of kinesis in the Physics . This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present-at-an-end and energeia with being-at-work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heideggers interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta , which insists that its mode of being is presence-at-hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotles metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it.
je trouve chez Aristote de quoi rengendrer la mtaphysique. Celle-ci ne me parat donc pas close, je dirais plutt quelle me parat inexplore. Paul Ricur1
Central to Martin Heideggers interpretation of the Greeks, and therefore to his account of the whole history of metaphysics, is the thesis that for the Greeks being meant presence. This interpretation has been extremely influential, provoking many and diverse attempts to overcome what has come to be called
Francisco J. Gonzalez is associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Skidmore College. He is the author of Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato's Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Northwestern University Press, 1998) and has recently completed a book entitled A Question of Dialogue: Heidegger and Plato.
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the metaphysics of presence. Yet I have elsewhere attempted to show that this thesis is untenable in the case of Plato,2 and my aim in the present paper is to show that it is equally untenable in the case of Aristotle. The crucial text is Heideggers recently published SS 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie . 3 It is here that Heidegger provides the most thorough argument and textual exegesis in support of his thesis that being in Aristotle means presence. This thesis then underlies, and is further defended in, Heideggers reading of Aristotle in later texts, most notably in the 1931 course Aristoteles, Metaphysik 13: Vom Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft , 4 and in the essay, Vom Wesen und Begriff der , written in 1939.5 A critical reading of these texts promises nothing less than the recovery of possibilities for metaphysics that the Heideggerian history of Being must ignore and exclude.6
1.
Heidegger often cites the ordinary, pre-philosophical meaning of the Greek word for being, , as an indication that the Greeks understood being as presence. Heidegger expresses this meaning in the 1924 course as follows: means [ Vermgen ], possessions and goods [ Hab und Gut ], the household [ der Hausstand], the estate [das Anwesen] (GA 18, 345). Heidegger emphasizes that the ordinary meaning thus not only intends a specific being as the genuine or exemplary being, that is, ones own goods or possessions, but also expresses the how of this beings being: its being available ( verfgbar ), usable (brauchbar), and in this way there for us. Therefore, if we take the ordinary meaning of as a clue to what being meant for the Greeks, as Heidegger suggests (24), then we can infer that the Greeks understood being as being-there, being-at-hand, being-present. Furthermore, if this ordinary meaning is preserved in the philosophical meaning, if the philosophical meaning only makes explicit and thematic what is connoted (mitgemeint) in the ordinary meaning (257, 346), then we can conclude that Aristotle too in using the word understood thereby presence. But can we legitimately read a philosophical conception of being into the ordinary use of the word ? Can we assume that this ordinary meaning is retained in the otherwise very different, technical philosophical meaning? After all, when Aristotle analyzes the different meanings of in Metaphysics , goods or possessions is not among them. Though Heidegger in later texts sometimes invokes the prephilosophical meaning of as if it were some kind of evidence for his thesis concerning the conception of being in Greek philosophy, in 1924 he is much more careful. Thus in 534
Heideggers manuscript for the course we find the following important warning regarding the interpretation of : The ordinary meaning as guideline. Beware! It could have disappeared. Only when there is a comprehensive examination of these indications. Otherwise easily dilettante. Mere semblance of depth. Precisely here one must take into consideration the fate and historicity of every language ( GA 18, 345). Heidegger thus makes it very clear that the technical meaning of cannot be simply deduced from the ordinary meaning, that the latter can at most serve as a guideline (Leitfaden) (345; see also 24 and 26). Heidegger therefore recognizes the need to demonstrate that moments of the ordinary meaning of , in particular the connotations of Hab and Anwesen , are still present in Aristotles technical use of the term (26). One way in which Heidegger attempts to demonstrate this is by showing that the different forms of being (Seinscharaktere), or rather the different ways of being ( Wie des Seins ) Aristotle presents in Metaphysics 8 all signify, with greater or lesser transparency, a there of beings [ Da des Seienden ] (350; see 34850 and 2934). For the purpose of the present paper, however, I will focus on the sense of being I take to pose the greatest challenge to what Heidegger wishes to demonstrate: the sense of being that cuts through the senses discussed at Metaphysics 8, a sense of being expressed in two words that Heidegger himself will come to consider the most fundamental words for being in Aristotle:7 and . That Heidegger in the 1924 course translates when it first makes its appearance as Gegenwart, Gegenwrtigsein eines Seienden als Ende (296) should not surprise us, since this is precisely the translation he needs to maintain the identification of with presence. Yet the context is precisely the one best suited to show the untenability of this translation. This context is the account of motion ( ) in the first three chapters of Physics , an account to which Heidegger devotes the last part of the 1924 course. He turns to this account because he believes that constitutes the genuine there-character of being (287). What this means will become apparent if we turn to Heideggers translation/interpretation of the definition of motion Aristotle offers in the first chapter of Physics , 201a1011: , , . Heidegger, adopting the translation of already mentioned, initially translates the whole sentence thus: motion is the being-present [Gegenwart] of what is capable of being-there as such (313; see also 315). An immediately apparent problem with this translation lies precisely in the word Gegenwart. A piece of wood can be present as something capable of being, for example, capable of being made into a table, without thereby being in motion. Yet Heidegger oddly insists that such presence 535
is motion. Insofar as it is there, the piece of wood is in motion. Insofar as it is genuinely there as capable-of-being-a-box, it is in motion (313). Essential to understanding this very strange claim is Heideggers identification of with significance or Bedeutsamkeit. This is made especially clear in Heideggers manuscript, where we read: is the There of the from to as such (ist das Da des von zu als solchen, 376). The piece of wood is there as significant, that is, as something to be used for a house or as something from which a box can be made: this is its Bedeutsamkeit. But this is also the that Heidegger sees as constituting the genuine being-there of being. The piece of wood sitting there is in motion in the sense of referring beyond itself, signifying something, and this is the that Aristotle is making manifest in his definition. One could of course object that what is significant in Heideggers sense, such as the piece of wood in his example, is at rest , while what Aristotle is trying to define is not rest ( ), which he characterizes as the of what is capable of being moved (202a45), but rather the opposite of rest (229b2326; 264a2728): in the sense of alteration, growth and decay, generation and destruction, and movement in place (201a1115). Furthermore, in this sense is not simply the being-present of the capable as capable, but the actual exercise , activation , of the capable as capable; for example, it is not simply the presence of the wood as buildable, but the actual exercise of this potential in the activity of building. Heidegger acknowledges this possible objection (314) but dismisses it as an illusion ( Tuschung ) by drawing our attention to the phenomenon of rest. When the carpenter goes to lunch and leaves what he is building uncompleted, the wood is at rest. But rest is something that can characterize only what is capable of being in motion: rest thus preserves, rather than eliminates, a things motion as its way of being: Rest is only a limit-case of motion (314). The way in which this answers the objection Heidegger faces is apparently this: Bedeutsamkeit can indeed characterize something at rest, something not presently being put to work, but what is thus at rest still has motion as its way of being. Thus the identification of Bedeutsamkeit and is preserved by way of an identification of both with rest. Thus in Heideggers manuscript we read the following: Rest as the way of being-there [Da-Weise] of what is in motion as an object of concern in the world [des Besorgten der Welt]. Only thus is significance [Bedeutsamkeit] fully determined (379).8 One can now understand why Heidegger gives such importance to the discovery of the phenomenon of rest as the way of being of most of the beings we encounter and deal with in the world: As far as I know, no one has ever brought into consideration this moment of rest (314). But even if we admit the unity of motion and rest to which Heidegger draws our attention, is it 536
not still important to explain the difference? While the explicit purpose of Aristotles definition of is to explain this difference, Heideggers interpretation prevents it from doing so. Specificallyand this is what is crucialin translating as Gegenwart and thereby making a kind of being-present, Heidegger blocks access to the phenomenon of as distinct from rest. Heideggers interpretation is strikingly similar to that of the philosophers whom Aristotle describes as explaining in terms of otherness (). Heidegger himself suggests the possibility that these philosophers saw as a characteristic a being has in itself in the sense that a being in itself has the possibility of being from to , of being characterized with regard to a certain determination by the absence of this determination. Does not then in this case determine the being of being-in-motion? (317). The problem, of course, is that Aristotle rejects this interpretation of because, in Heideggers own paraphrase, Wood can be a box and is there as wooddetermined in itself through and yet not determined as moving (384). It is as if Heidegger in proceeding through the text has suddenly encountered a resurrected Aristotle telling him his interpretation will not stand. Heidegger nevertheless refuses to see defeat here and instead joins Aristotle in rejecting the explanation of motion as . However, he can do so only by suggesting that the problem with this explanation is its failure to include the moment of being-present (Gegenwrtigsein) (318, 384). It is not enough for something to be characterized by otherness or difference in order for it to be in motion: this otherness or difference must be present. Heideggers interpretation is thus saved because it included presence along with Bedeutsamkeit as essential dimensions of . Yet the distance here between Heidegger and Aristotle is made clear by the fact that Aristotles objection to the thesis that is has nothing to do with its failure to take presence into account. Instead, his objections are that what is other is not necessarily moved and that movement occurs not from and to what is other, but rather between contraries ( Physics 201b2124). In other words, Aristotle appeals not to the phenomenon of presence, but to the phenomenon of motion itself. This again shows that it is Heidegger who is reading presence into the text. Furthermore, Aristotles objection explicitly rejects as a characteristic of precisely what Heidegger wants to identify it with: the structure of being from/to what is other. In other words, what characterizes is the relation of contraries and not Bedeutsamkeit. A little later in the course Heidegger again appears to undermine his own interpretation of when he insists: One should not simply say: is simply the of 537
what is capable. What is capable is not as such moved (320). Yet Heidegger now appears to move towards a different account of motion: What is in possibility comes to its proper end in being put to work [In-Arbeit-Sein], it is then genuinely what it is, namely, being-capable. In relation to the of , however, it is not finished [nicht fertig] (321). Why this shift now in Heideggers account from defining motion in terms of Gegenwart to defining it in terms of In-Arbeit-Sein? The main reason is that Heidegger by this point in the course has come to Aristotles characterization of as incomplete ( ). This is clearly a characteristic of that Heideggers earlier interpretation cannot account for: what is at rest and gegenwrtig in its significance need not be but, on the contrary, can be finished and complete. If we saw that Heideggers earlier characterization of was unable to capture what is distinctive of as opposed to rest, we can now say that this is incompleteness, the state of being neither fully potential nor fully actual: and this is precisely the difficult indeterminacy of that Aristotle is trying to explain. But how can Heidegger feel justified in now changing his interpretation, specifically, in replacing Gegenwart with InArbeit-Sein ? The reason is that he thinks he finds such a distinction in Aristotle himself, as he makes clear in the following remark: Insofar as Being ultimately means Being-atits-end, Holding-itself-in-its-end in a final sense, , Aristotle, when he speaks with care, must characterize the being [Dasein] of being-in-motion as (321). 9 What Heidegger is assuming here is a distinction between as being-present-at-an-end and as being-at-worktowards-an-end. This distinction then allows him to grant that the definition of motion as is not fully adequate, since motion is , and that Aristotle would be more careful if he were to characterize motion as in the sense of an incomplete being-at-work. But what grounds are there for this sharp distinction between and ?10 And is InArbeit-Sein an adequate translation of the that defines motion?11 Let us consider the second question first. This translation of is of course suggested by the etymology of the term. Yet, as Heidegger well knows, etymology by itself can prove nothing. Furthermore, Heideggers etymological account is questionable on two main points. (1) He takes the word to mean work, whether in the sense of working, as here, or in the sense of the work, the finished product, which, as we will see, is how Heidegger interprets the word in later texts (these two related meanings, for example, are the only ones recognized in the 1931 course [ GA 33, 50]). But are either or both of these interpretations fully adequate interpretations of ? To see that they are not, one need only recall the use of 538
the word in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics : to say that the of man is the souls in accordance with reason [ ] (1098a7) is not to say that this is the work man does nor that it is something produced by man; this is why the translation of function is sometimes chosen. Note also how in this part of the Nicomachean Ethics the is argued to be an with no sense of redundancy. (2) Therefore, the other problem with Heideggers reading is that it tends to reduce to : as being-at-work it is work; as standing in the work produced, it is the work produced.12 Heideggers translation has indeed more than etymology to recommend it: it is certainly better to characterize motion as a putting-to-work of a capability than it is to characterize it as the mere being-present of this capability. Yet this translation confronts a serious philosophical problem: it collapses the distinction between and . Being-at-work towards an unachieved end is itself a motion, so that to define thus is necessarily to turn it into a motion. Heidegger indeed characterizes , in distinction from , as Unfertigsein (381), das Noch-nicht-fertig (382), thereby identifying it with motion not only implicitly but at one point in the course explicitly : is , but not (296).13 Yet such an identification is untenable for two reasons. (1) Aristotles definition of motion would become viciously circular, since it would amount to saying: motion is the putting-in-motion of what is capable qua capable. Of course, as Heidegger would be quick to point out, in philosophy, circles are not always vicious. But while some circular reasoning can be illuminating, a definition of motion as the putting-intomotion of what is capable of motion illuminates or reveals nothing at all.14 (2) The second problem is that, in a well-known text from the Metaphysics ( 6, 1048b1835), Aristotle sharply distinguishes between and precisely because the latter is while the former is not.15 And it is important to emphasize that the definition of as an does not at all contradict their distinction. The that defines motion is not itself an incomplete process towards some end but, rather, the full actuality and completion of what is capable insofar as it is capable. It is the qualification insofar as it is capable that explains the incompleteness of motion and not anything in itself, as Aristotle explicitly says: , though a kind of , is incomplete []. The cause of its being incomplete is the capable [ ] of which it is the ( Phys . 2, 201b3133).16 This is why the definition is not circular: in itself is not motion 17 nor is the capable qua capable in itself motion: only the of the capable qua capable is motion. This is also why Aristotle at one point can even, with no hint of paradox, characterize motion as an (257b89), a 539
characterization that of course defeats the whole point of Heideggers distinction between and . We can now draw an important conclusion: the key term in the definition of , whether it be or , can mean neither Gegenwrtigsein nor an unfertiges im-ArbeitSein: the former interpretation eliminates the phenomenon of altogether by substituting for it the mere presence of a capability, while the latter interpretation leaves it completely unexplained by simply defining it as itself. But these inadequate interpretations of or rest on the sharp distinction Heidegger makes between them. Only by being sharply distinguished from can be rid of any connotation of activity and be identified with Gegenwart, Gegenwrtigsein eines Seienden als Ende and Fertigsein (296); only by being sharply distinguished from can be characterized as an incomplete movement towards a . It is therefore this distinction that fails to make sense of Aristotles account of motion, an account in which the terms and are used interchangeably. What justification, then, does Heidegger provide for making such a distinction? Before looking at this justification we need to reflect on why Heidegger needs a sharp distinction between and . As already noted, one of Heideggers principle aims in this discussion is to demonstrate that for Aristotle, and for the Greeks in general, Being was understood as presence and, more specifically, as a static presence. To support this interpretation he must argue that Aristotles word for being in the fullest sense, that is, , means being-present-once-and-for-all, being-at-an-end, being-finished. But the only way in which he can interpret in this way is to sharply distinguish it from and interpret the latter in a way that completely subordinates it to the former: as movement towards being-atan-end, being-finished. The conclusion that Heidegger thus wishes to arrive at is clearly stated in the following passage from his manuscript for the course:
The How of the There (Da) of something: how does being-atwork [In-Arbeit-sein] arrive at this ontological-hermeneutical precedence? Because being=being-produced [Sein=Hergestelltsein], There=being-present [Da=Anwesendsein], being-finished [Fertigsein], having-come-into the Now [Hersein in Jetzt], into presence [Gegenwart]; in being-present-before [Gegenwrtigsein], being-inpossession-of-the-there [Da-Habendsein], remaining-there with [Sichaufhalten bei]. (381)
But what becomes of this conclusion if and are synonyms? It simply collapses. If means the same as , then as activity it cannot mean what is 540
simply present ( schlechthin gegenwrtig ), what is finished , much less what is produced . If means the same as , then as an end-in-itself it cannot be a process nor therefore work or production. The synonymous pair / would then name a conception of Being that evades and transcends the conception to which Heidegger tries to confine Aristotle and the Greeks. But it is now time to look at the textual evidence Heidegger provides for the distinction on which his present reading of Aristotles ontology, and Greek ontology in general, depends. The evidence provided on p. 295 is Metaphysics 3 1047a30. Here Aristotle, according to most editions of the text, refers to as : (as a name) is set down in relation to, or for, . However, this is not the text Heidegger reads: he follows Diels in substituting for so that he can interpret the text as meaning that spannt sich aus zum Ende, stretches itself towards the end (296). This of course is the interpretation Heidegger needs in order to distinguish between as an unfinished movement towards an end and as a being-finished-at-an-end. Unfortunately, W. D. Ross already showed in 1924 that the substitution of for is neither possible nor necessary.
But it is only in the active voice that Aristotle uses in this sense. [In other words, there is no parallel for the middle voice meaning what Heidegger takes it to mean here]. implies that Aristotle was in the habit of connecting the words and together in his lectures, and such phrases as [we have set down the words and as meaning the same] (Pl. Pol . 276E, cf. 259d) form a close enough parallel.18
In short, there is a more plausible reading of the text that makes it mean the exact opposite of what Heidegger needs it to mean: the word is set down in relation to in the sense that Aristotle normally uses the two together, and perhaps eventhis is perfectly compatible with the text on this readinginterchangeably. And this of course is Aristotles practice. We have already seen that the two terms appear to be used interchangeably in the account of motion (see especially 201a2729 19 and 202a1518) and there are many more examples of this synonymy in Aristotles texts. Therefore, we can conclude that both the most plausible reading of 1047a30 and Aristotles general practice rule out Heideggers interpretation. However, Heidegger does offer a textual parallel for his substitution of for at 1047a30. He 541
cites Metaphysics 8, 1050a2123 where Aristotle writes: For the is and is the ; therefore, the name is also said according to the and stretches towards ( ) . So in this text Heidegger has the word he wants, , in order to interpret the relation between and as a movement from one to the other. But two objections can be made here. First, the present text does not support Heideggers reading of 1047a30 since the word here is in the active voice, not the middle voice (Heidegger must attribute the same meaning to both voices, which is not plausible). Secondly, here as in the earlier text it is the word that is the subject: it is not itself that stretches towards , but the word . What can it mean to say that a word tends towards another word? What else besides that it tends towards the meaning of the other word, tends to mean something similar or the same? And this is the interpretation clearly suggested by the context of the entire sentence. Here we do well to cite Ross again, this time on 1050a2123: Because the is the (l. 21), the word , which is derived from , tends to mean the same as (264). In short, rather than saying that itself is a movement towards , what the sentence says is that the word tends to have the meaning of . This reading would bring the passage in line with the most plausible reading of the earlier passage at 1047a30: Aristotle sets down the word together with . This reading would not only fail to support but would even contradict Heideggers interpretation of the relation between the two terms. Given its slim, or only apparent, textual basis and, more importantly, its inability to make sense of Aristotles account of motion, Heideggers distinction between and must be rejected. But to reject this distinction is, as I have already suggested, to reject Heideggers thesis that being for the Greeks meant being-present and being-produced. To think and in their synonymy, as Aristotles text demands , is to recognize, on the one hand, that is activity, being-active, and not some static presence, that it is in its by being an activity with its aim in itself and not by being finished or at an end ; and, on the other hand, that is activity but not Arbeit, not something unfinished. In other words, it is to recognize that the distinction between Fertigsein and Unfertigsein is completely incapable of capturing what is meant by either or . What emerges from such reflection as the central characteristic of Being is not presence and not being-produced, but rather act. As is clear from the passage cited above, with its characterization of Being as Hergestelltsein, Heidegger insists on making and the guiding and determining perspective in 542
Aristotles account of Being. What reflection on the synonymy of and shows, however, is that it is , as sharply distinguished from and ,21 that is Aristotles guideline in the interpretation of Being. In other words, what we find in Aristotle is not an ontology of production, as Heidegger insists, but rather what Paul Ricur has called an ontology of action.22 Specifically, this means that it is from the perspective of understood as that Aristotle interprets and and not vice versa . Nothing demonstrates this better than Heideggers complete failure to explain Aristotles account of from the perspective of a conception of Being derived from production (Being as full presence, being-finished, being-at-an-end). It is only from the perspective of act, or being-in-act, that we can explain as the being-in-act of what is capable qua being capable. The understanding of and together as act also has important consequences for the understanding of the relation between being and time. In sharply distinguishing between and by characterizing the former as meaning being-fully-present-now and the latter as meaning on-the-way-to-being-fully-present-now, Heidegger is attributing to Aristotle a conception of Being as, in the words cited above, Hersein in Jetzt, in eine Gegenwart (381). Being is thus understood within the horizon of a naive conception of time as a series of nows. But this is precisely the conception of time and being that is shattered by an understanding of and as synonyms. As Aristotle explicitly argues, while is in time, is in an important sense not in time (1174a14ff.) This means that while , having its outside itself, takes time, is stretched out in time so as to be countable with respect to before and after, , being its own , does not have a before and an after since it is in whatever time ( , 1174b56). But is not an then still in time in the sense of being complete in the moment, in the now ? Here we need to be very careful. Aristotle indeed, after claiming that the activity of pleasure ( ), unlike being moved ( ), need not occur in time, adds the following explanation: For it is a whole in the now ( , 1174b9). But does this meanand this is the crucial questionthat an is whole and complete in the now in the sense that a house, at the end of the process of building, is whole and complete in the now? Can we speak in both cases of something finished , completed, and therefore present now? Can we, in short, reduce to the conception of Being that Heidegger attributes to Aristotle, a conception determined by the perspective of the now, the present?23 To see that these questions must be answered negatively, we need only consider the striking way in which Aristotle illus543
trates the temporal difference between and in Metaphysics 6, 1048b1835: 24 while in the case of a such as building I cannot say simultaneously (, Met. 1048b23) that I have built the house and that I am building the house, in the case of an such as seeing, I can say simultaneously that I am seeing and that I have seen. In short, in a , the present tense excludes the past perfect tense and vice versa:25 that something cannot be what it is becoming , this opposition between being and becoming, is precisely what it means to exist in time. But how then can simultaneously admit both the past perfect and the present tense, how can it overcome their opposition and thereby not exist in time? Through careful reflection on what Aristotle says here we can avoid the mistake mentioned above: to see as differing from only in being finished , completed in the present moment would be to identify it with the past perfect tense, thus locating it, like the house that has been built, in time (and, we could add, in motion , as the completion or finishing of motion). In this case, would differ from in that, while can admit only the present active tense, would admit only the past perfect: would, like the house that has been built, exclude the present active tense.26 But this of course is not what Aristotle says. To claim, as he does, that admits simultaneously both the present and the past perfect tenses is to put it completely outside the distinction between being-unfinished and beingfinished, a distinction that, after all, has meaning only in time. If the same thing can simultaneously be seeing and have seen ( , 1048b3344),27 this is because seeing is always complete without ever being finished . I can of course stop seeing, but this is not to finish seeing.28 To describe my seeing, or another , as in itself finished or unfinished, makes no sense at all. To say that seeing, and as such, does not exist in time and transcends the opposition between the past perfect and the present tense is to say that it cannot be located in any present , not even in an eternal present. I have seen and am seeing cannot be reduced to I am seeing, I am seeing, I am seeing, ad infinitum. We have here neither a static eternal repetition of the same nor a process : we have an activity, an , which as such is not in time in the sense that it exists neither in a series of moments nor in one moment of this series; if this that simultaneously is and has been exists as a whole in the now, this now cannot be a point, but must rather be an uncountable stretch, a time outside of time understood as the counting of motion. In short, differs from in being complete ; but also differs from the product of (e.g., the built house) in never being finished; I have seen but am also simultaneously 29 still see ing . This is 544
precisely the mystery of that puts it completely beyond the realm of and : it is active without being in motion; it is complete without being finished; it is now and not now, present and not present; temporal and yet outside of time.30 What is arguably the key example Aristotle uses in Metaphysics 6 is life itself.31 While it is not possible simultaneously to be moving and have moved, since these are different (, 1048b3233), it is the same to be living and have lived (1048b27). Though life is complete, it is never completed; in its very completeness, in its very having lived, it is always a present tense verb: living. Life of course can cease with death, but as Aristotle explicitly says, it can never come to a stop ( , 1048b2627). Also, a dead person cannot strictly be described as having lived (perfect tense), but only as someone who once lived (imperfect tense). Having lived is possible only in living and living is possible only in having lived. In this way life itself is not in time, that is, cannot be located anywhere on the continuum of counted time, neither in any present now nor in any sequence of present nows. As thus characterized, the of life can be identified neither with being-at-work, which implies working-towards-a-goal and thus not having yet lived , nor with being-at-an-end and being-at-hand, which implies no longer living. In other words, life that is at work has not yet lived, while life that is at hand is dead. These brief reflections on Aristotles fundamental concepts of and should suffice to show that Heideggers interpretation of these concepts is not only wrong but disastrously wrong.32 In being sharply distinguished from each other, both concepts are distorted beyond recognition. It is at this cost that Heidegger reads into Aristotle a conception of Being as Being-present. It is at this cost that he transforms into an ontology of Vorhandenheit what is an ontology of in which the highest and most genuine being is, despite being unmoved, or rather because unmoved, characterized as life ( ) and pleasure ( , Met. 1072b16 and 2630), thinking ( ) and nothing but thinking ( , Met . 1074b3435). Though Heidegger does not discuss the unmoved mover in SS 1924, in an earlier course on Aristotle from SS 1922 he appears, according to the transcript of Helene Wei, to have recognized the problem that the unmoved mover posed for his interpretation: But how can it be pure despite its being ? Must there then be an opposition [Gegensatz] between and ? (GA 62, 321). His reply is simply to assert dogmatically that is to be determined from the perspective of motion and is itself a type of motion: 1. The meaning of determines itself purely from the phenomenon of motion. 2. What it is, what type of motion: that too is a consequence of the meaning of pure movedness 545
[Bewegtheit] (321). In a course from SS 1926 a different, and even opposed, solution is suggested: No , no , but pure , pure energy [reine Energie], that is, pure selfstanding constant presence from out of itself [reine eigenstndige stndige Anwesenheit von ihm selbst her] (GA 22, 178; see also 328). The above analysis and critique has shown that everything is lost in the move signaled by the seemingly innocent and inconspicuous that is. Just a little later in the same text is characterized as the highest form of being-at-hand (hchste Art des Vorhandenseins) (180), which would make the unmoved mover something at hand in the highest sense because eternally-at-hand . The being of the unmoved mover would thus not essentially differ from the being of an eternal, indestructible rock. In this reduction of the being of the first being to Vorhandenheit, the life and activity that are both the heart and head of Aristotles ontology are completely lost.33
2.
We can turn now to a consideration of two important later texts on Aristotle already cited above: the 1931 course on Metaphysics 13 and the 1939 essay Vom Wesen und Begriff der . While Heidegger in these texts builds on and further carries out his reading of and , we will see that his interpretation undergoes no fundamental transformation. These later interpretations will instead make even clearer the limitations of Heideggers interpretative framework and thus the need to free Aristotles ontology from this framework. As the above reflections have already suggested, what is at issue here is not primarily the reliability of Heidegger as an interpreter of Greek texts nor even the correct reading of Aristotle; what is at issue is itself, as the word for a possibility of thinking that is arguably still unexplored and that, while still alive in Aristotles texts, is suppressed by Heideggers reading of these texts. The 1931 course is primarily devoted to Aristotles concept of . However, in Heideggers interpretation of chapter three of Metaphysics , the chapter in which Aristotle critiques the Megarian identification of with , the latter notion is necessarily at issue. Furthermore, a brief consideration of this part of the course will show that Heideggers reading does as much violence to the notion of as it does to the notion of , and again with the aim of identifying the Greek conception of being with presence-athand. That this is indeed Heideggers aim can be shown through a brief summary of his overall interpretation of 3. The central question at issue in this chapter, according to Heidegger, is how is at-hand (vorhanden). The thesis of the Megarians is that a is present at-hand only when it 546
is being exercised, that is, only in . Heidegger insists repeatedly that this Megarian thesis is to be taken very seriously and is even a pinnacle of Greek thought. Its powerful justification is that only in does a show itself, offer a look (Anblick), announce its presence (GA 33, 17980; see also 183). In other words, the Megarians claim that is at hand only in because it is only in the process of production, and especially in the final product, that a comes into full presence. But then the conception of being that comes to expression in the Megarian thesis is the Greek conception of being as Hergestelltheit and Anwesenheit . Thus the Megarian thesis, Heidegger asserts, is conceived in a good Greek manner [gut griechisch gedacht]; indeed, not only that, but it isright up to the new step Aristotle takesthe only possible interpretation of the being-at-hand of a capability (180). If the Megarians are only giving voice, with great consistency and insight, to the Greek conception of being, then isnt Aristotle, through his critique of the Megarians, bringing this conception into question? As the passage just cited indicates, Heidegger grants Aristotle a modification of this conception of being as presence, but not a radical departure. Indeed, Heidegger asserts emphatically that Aristotle and the Megarians are in complete agreement (sich ganz darber einig) in understanding being as presence (179). Thus Heidegger even suggests that the Megarian thesis might have been provoked by Aristotles failure to explain the being-at-hand of (169) or his dogmatic assumption that this question was already resolved (175). What Aristotle does achieve in chapter 3 is to show a way in which can be present without being : namely, by being had. The having of is still a certain kind of presence of . Whether or not Heidegger thought Aristotles response to the Megarians was adequatethe Megarians could, after all, insist that the is really had only in actual exercise, in is not clear since the course comes to an abrupt end before Heideggers reading of Metaphysics 3 is completed. We can presume, however, that he would not consider fully adequate any response that was still locked within a conception of being as presence, as Aristotles supposedly was. Heidegger can thus maintain that the Megarians, despite the injustice history has done them, were of an equal stature with Plato and Aristotle (hatten den gleichen Rang, 163); they were, after all, more consistently Greek! It is not possible here to go into all the details of Heideggers reading of Metaphysics 3, a reading that without question offers some rich philosophical rewards. Instead, only one fundamental question will be posed to this reading: is it really indisputable ( unbestreitbar , 17071), as Heidegger asserts, that the question at issue in 3 is how can be 547
vorhanden and therefore, given the supposedly Greek conception of Being, how it can be present? First, it needs to be noted that Heideggers thesis that Aristotle and the Megarians shared the same conception of being as presence and therefore could disagree only about how is present is asserted categorically towards the beginning of the reading and is never demonstrated . In other words, it is a presupposition of the reading, not its result. However, Heidegger does a number of things to make the text fit this assumption. It is by showing the arbitrariness and untenability of these interpretative moves that I hope to show that 3 has nothing to do with the Vorhandenheit or Anwesenheit of , and for the simple reason that for Aristotle a is not something present or at hand. The view Aristotle attributes to the Megarians in the very first line of the chapter, and the view that he spends the rest of the chapter challenging, is: : when something is active only then is it capable. It seems from this that the Megarians are making a claim about the capability of capability: a capability is a capability only in its exercise; to be capable is actively to be capable, that is, to be acting. Yet consider Heideggers translation of the Greek: When a power is at work, only then is the having-power-for at hand [vorhanden] (167). With this translation the question becomes not how a capability is a capability, not how what is capable is capable, but how a capability is vorhanden. But there is in the Greek nothing corresponding to vorhanden! Heidegger takes care of this problem by adding to the text some new Greek, some Greek of his own making. After citing the Greek that is actually in the text, Heidegger adds: that is, (167). It is now this added Greek that Heidegger can translate as is vorhanden. But does this really make an important difference? Is not the being-at-hand of capability just a different way of saying being-capable ( )? Most certainly not. To substitute the being-at-hand of capability for being-capable is to subordinate and even reduce being-capable to a different sense of being: being vorhanden, which is then later transformed, through the alchemy of Heideggers undefended thesis concerning the Greek conception of being, into being present. Heidegger would of course claim that the Greeks are the ones who reduce all senses of being, including being-capable, to presence. But the irony is that Heidegger can maintain this thesis only by himself introducing presence and being-athand into the text. Neither at the beginning of Metaphysics 3, nor anywhere in the course of 3, is the presence or being-athand of at issue, or even mentioned. Furthermore, the dispute between the Megarians and Aristotle can be naturally interpreted with no reference to 548
Vorhandenheit or Anwesenheit . What the Megarians and Aristotle do agree on is that is not mere possibility, but a positive capability, a power ( Kraft in Heideggers defensible translation). The Megarian objection is that power is power only in being exercised and that therefore and cannot be distinguished. That this is a sensible objectionthe Megarians, as Heidegger insists, were no foolsis shown by the fact that Aristotle himself in De Anima characterizes knowledge that is possessed without being exercised both as an (412a2127) and as a (417a2628): it is an in contrast to the mere potential for acquiring knowledge possessed by a certain genus or matter; it is a in contrast to the actual exercise of knowledge. Thus, even for Aristotle, in the strongest sense of the word, that is, when understood not as a mere potential (as in a human embryo having the potential to learn mathematics) but as a positive capability, is .34 However, what he must argue in 3 is that despite this unity of and , their distinctness must be preserved if what only their distinctness can explain is to be preserved: namely, not only motion, but even the independence of the external world in its relation to us (since this requires a distinction between what is perceived and what is perceivable). The argument, thus plausibly interpreted, has nothing to do with the being-at-hand or presence of ; what is at issue is only as .35 As already noted, Heidegger argues that Aristotle explains the presence-at-hand of by interpreting the being of as being-had. Aristotle sees the presence of as such in ; what is had, is in possession and as possessed usable, at hand (183). One sees clearly in this sentence why Heidegger is insisting that Aristotle understood the being of as being-had: it is in this way that Aristotle can be made to conform to the supposedly Greek conception of being as what is produced and thus present for use, at hand. But what is the evidence that Aristotle understood the being of in this way? Heidegger can appeal only to Aristotles habit, in this text and elsewhere, of using the phrase as a synonym for the verb . But does Aristotles use of the common Greek idiom of having a really show that he located the being of in having ? 36 To believe this one must at least already be convinced that in 3 Aristotle is seeking to explain how is present and at handhow else than as had ?and even then one should pause before reading so much into one word. In any case, we have seen that there is no reason to believe this is Aristotles goal in the text. We also need to note how philosophically questionable Heideggers method of proceeding here is. He is reducing to and then reading out of the verb , instead of the verb , the meaning of being that is 549
operative here. Aristotle, who knows better, insists that beingcapable and having are two fundamentally distinct senses of being: the latter is one of the categories (Cat. 1b27, 2a3), while the former is distinct from all being in the sense of the categories (Met. E 2 1026a33b2; Met. 1 1045b2735).37 And Aristotle in the present text has been seen to be faithful to his principle: he discusses being-capable in terms of being-capable and not in terms of any other sense of being. must be interpreted as another and looser way of saying , not vice versa.38 If Heideggers reading can so far be said to have forced the text, this is nothing compared to what he does to the sentence at 1047a2024. Here Aristotle, defending the distinctness of and , says what anyone except Heidegger would translate as follows: So it can happen that something is capable of being something ( ) without being it, and capable of not being something ( ) while being it. This is how Heidegger translates: So it can happen that something as capable of something indeed really is [wirklich ist] and at the same time is yet not really that of which this real capability as such is capable, and it can also happen that something capable as a capability is not really [nicht wirklich ist] and yet precisely is really that of which it is capable (215). Why the tortuous and even painful circumlocution? What Heidegger is trying to do is transform the capability of being at issue in the text into the being of capability; even more bizarrely, he is paraphrasing the capability of not being as the not-being of a capability as a capability. Here refutation seems superfluous, for why point out what any beginning student of Greek knows: that means capable of being something and not something capable really is; that means capable of not being and not something capable is not really? The important question is why Heidegger, who certainly knows his Greek well enough to see that, would willfully so distort the text. The answer is simple: only through such a distortion can Heidegger force through his thesis that what is at issue in the text is the Vorhandenheit and Anwesenheit of capability. Aristotle speaks of being-capable, but Heidegger needs him to speak of the being-present or being-at-hand of capability. The violence that this requires is especially evident in Heideggers translation of Aristotles example: Being capable of walking and not walking ( ) becomes what is capable-of-walking is really a being (at-hand) and yet does not walk in reality (215)! That Heidegger must resort here to such impossible readings of the Greek only confirms what has been clear from the beginning: there is in Metaphysics 3 no talk of the being-present or being-at-hand of a capability, but only of being-capable (of being x) where this is not 550
reduced, and cannot be reduced, to any kind of being-present or being-at-hand. Yet Heidegger tries again when he turns to the definition or characterization of being-capable Aristotle provides at 1047a24 26. The meaning of this sentence is unclear and disputed, but the Greek itself is not especially difficult and can be translated thus: Something is capable [ ] if, when the of which it is said to have the occurs in it, there will be nothing incapable [ ]. The problem this sentence poses for interpretation is its apparent circularity: it appears to be saying that something is capable when it is not incapable. One common expedient for remedying this problem is to give the defining phrase not a completely different meaning from that of the word that is being defined: is taken to mean capable, while not is taken to mean not logically impossible. The sense would then be that something is capable when there is no logical impossibility in its having the corresponding .39 Yet this expedient, which involves giving two occurrences of the same word in the same sentence two radically different meanings, is highly questionable and Heidegger is right to reject it. Furthermore, the expedient is not necessary since sense can be made of the sentence without it, especially when it is not seen as representing a strict definition. Given the context, the task of the sentence can be taken to be this: to show the inseparability of from , and thus acknowledge what truth there is in the Megarian objection, while nevertheless showing their distinctness and preserving the autonomy and irreducibility of being-capable. We can identify something as capable only when in exercise or activity it proves not incapable. For example, someone cannot be said to be capable of playing chess unless an actual chess game finds him not incapable of playing chess. This means that a indeed cannot be identified or defined without the corresponding . So far the Megarians have a point. But Aristotles statement also maintains the distinctness of and . It does not say simply that something is when it is in , but rather when in it proves not . is not , but rather the site where shows itself as . Here being-capable still remains distinct from that in which it shows itself not incapable. Whatever circularity there is in Aristotles statement is intentional and unavoidable: being-capable can ultimately be explained only in terms of being-capable (or not being incapable) because it cannot be reduced to any other kind of being: neither being in nor, much less, being in any other sense. What has been sketched out here is of course not Heideggers reading. This is because, in order to make the sentence fit his 551
interpretation of 3, he must insist that it is not about beingcapable, but rather about the being-present or being-at-hand of capability. To push through this reading, Heidegger must again read the Greek in his own inimitable manner. The word in the opening phrase does not mean, Heidegger insists, being- capable Vermgend sein (220). He insists on this because he needs the to mean is present at hand. Thus, on his reading, means not this is capable, but rather: this capable is present at hand. Heidegger actually expresses surprise that his reading is in all interpretations and translationsas far as I know completely missed, and continues that as a result every prospect of understanding the definition is from the very beginning pushed aside (220). The phrase must be understood as the capable is present at hand because the task of the entire chapter is to determine in what the being of the capable, its realitythe of the immediately preceding sentenceconsists (220). That this is the task of the chapter, however, has been seen to be Heideggers own invention and one sustained only at the cost of the kind of rewriting and misreading of the text which we see again here and saw at its most outlandish in the reading of at 1047a2024 to which Heidegger now refers. It is perhaps precisely in order to preempt such criticism that Heidegger states the following a little earlier in the course.
When we in the process go beyond what Aristotle says, this is not in order to make what is said there better and the like, but at first only in order to understand it at all; here, the manner and form of expression in which Aristotle on his side may have carried out the considerations that are necessary here is a matter of complete indifference [gnzlich gleichgltig]. (192)
One can certainly agree that an interpretation needs to go beyond what is said while yet strongly objecting to the suggestion that Aristotles own manner and form of expression are a matter of complete indifference! The latter are especially important when what is at issue is Aristotles implicit understanding of being. What has been seen again and again is that while Aristotle speaks only of being-capable in terms of beingcapable, Heidegger repeatedly ignores, changes, or distorts Aristotles form of expression in order to make him speak of being-present and being-at-hand. The last part of the 1931 course that needs to be considered in the present context is Heideggers return, immediately before the course abruptly ends, to 1047a3032, and thus to the question of the relation between and . One departure from the reading in 1924 is that Heidegger now does not emend the text but reads , perhaps because he 552
had by this point consulted Rosss commentary.40 However, his view concerning the distinction between and does not appear to change. He translates even the unemended text as follows: Being-at-work [Am-Werke-sein], a meaning that is in itself directed at [ausgerichtet ist auf] . Furthermore, Heideggers comments explain the meaning of thus: the end, possessing perfection as something carried out, holding itself in itmost precisely: being-produced [Hergestelltsein] (224). What remains the same here is therefore the interpretation of and from the perspective of Herstellen, and therefore from the perspective of rather than , with the result that the one becomes being-at-work ( Am-Werke-Sein ) 41 and the other becomes being-produced ( Hergestelltheit ). What has already been shown to be the main problem with such an interpretation is made clear when Heidegger in this course, after making the perhaps acceptable claim that and are essentially related to , goes further and claims that they are ways of being-in-motion (Weisen des In-Bewegung-seins, 216). This is the fundamental mistake: as argued above, and are not ways of being in motion 42 and therefore a fortiori certainly cannot be interpreted in terms of producing and being-produced. Aristotle himself makes this clear when at the very beginning of Metaphysics he tells us that, while he will begin with the most common sense of , which is in relation to motion, this sense is not what he needs for his present aim ( , 1045b361046a1). Why? Because and go beyond, or are more than ( ), the and said according to motion ( , 1046a12). Predictably, Heideggers reading of this passage does everything possible to reinstate motion as the essential and unsurpassable guiding perspective, despite what Aristotle says. Thus Heidegger asserts: When accordingly in our treatise the theme of investigation should become and this does not rule out that nevertheless remains in view; on the contrary: it must remain in view, but not (54). Therefore Heidegger resorts to the extraordinary expedient, grounded on nothing in the text, of characterizing and as , that is, he simply changes the accusative to the genitive and thus retains motion as the determining perspective for even and (53). This opens the door to characterizing later in the course the and that go beyond what is said according to motion as nevertheless ways of motion and moments of production, in flagrant contradiction to what Aristotle himself claims to want. 43 In short, what we see in the 1931 course is an unwarranted and violent reduction not only of and 553
, but now also of , to a conception of being as presence and being-produced which, judging from all the evidence, is not Aristotles, but Heideggers.44
3.
The interpretation of and in the 1939 essay, Vom Wesen und Begriff der , departs from the earlier interpretations of 1924 and 1931 in no longer making a sharp distinction between the two concepts. Is this because Heidegger is now closer to understanding them both together as a kind of activity or act distinct both from motion and from what is produced, at-an-end, completed? That this is not the case is evident from the fact that his characterization of has not changed: it is still Sich-im-Ende-Haben (354). What has happened is only that has now been brought into line with this interpretation, being no longer interpreted as beingat-work ( In-Arbeit-Sein or Am-Werke-Sein ) but rather as standing-in-the-work: Im-Werk-Stehen; das Werk als das, was voll im Ende steht, where das Werk is also understood in the sense of what is to be produced and is produced [im Sinne des Herzustellenden und Her-gestellten] (354). We thus see that nothing essential has changed in Heideggers interpretation: we have the same interpretation of and in terms of production (Herstellen) and thus the same ignoring of the fundamental distinction between and ; the only change is that now both and are identified with the product, the result, the end or completion of this process of production. In other words, the only change is an even greater eclipse of as activity.45 In an important passage of the Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle asserts in no ambiguous terms: It is evident that becomes [ ] and is not at hand like some possession [ ] (NE 1169b2930). It is as if Aristotle were here anticipating Heideggers misinterpretation and objecting to it. While Aristotle insists that is activity, even at the cost of giving the equally erroneous impression that it is becoming in the sense in which motion is, Heidegger is determined to reduce its way of being to that of something produced and possessed. We can therefore expect that the interpretation Heidegger proceeds to give of Aristotles definition of motion in the 1939 essay, like the account he initially gave in the SS 1924 course, will turn it into a definition of rest. This is indeed not only what happens, but Heidegger makes this consequence of his interpretation quite explicit. So many momentous and questionable moves take place in his brief interpretation of 1939 that, without the preparation provided by a reading of the SS 1924 554
course discussed above, it must leave one completely bewildered. Consider first his translation of Aristotles definition of motion as stated at Physics 201b45: The having-itself-in-its-end [Das Sich-im-Ende-Haben] by that which is apt [geeignet] insofar as it is apt (that is, in its aptness) is clearly (the essence of) movedness [Bewegtheit] (355). The obvious objection to this translation/interpretation is that an ability that has reached its end, that has itself in its end, is no longer in motion, but rather at rest. The unprepared reader must assume that Heidegger cannot possibly mean what he says. How could he be defining motion as an abilitys fulfillment in its final end or product when this would instead be the end (in both senses of the word) of motion? That this, however, is exactly what Heidegger is doing is shown not only by the preceding interpretation of cited above, but by the example with which he grounds and prepares his interpretation of Aristotles definition of motion.
The transformation [Umschlagen] of the apt wood into a table consists in this: that the aptness of the apt emerges more and more fully, fulfilling itself in the look [Aussehen] of the table and thus coming to a stand in the table produced, i.e., brought-intothe-unconcealed. In the resting of this stand (of what has come to a stand) the emerging aptness ( ) of the apt ( ) gathers and has itself as in its end. (355)
It is thus clear that Heidegger means exactly what one otherwise would think he could not mean: that what Aristotles definition of motion is describing is how the apt or capable has-itself-as-in-its-end in the sense of having-come-to-a-stand and being-at-rest in what is produced. But this is not motion. As Aristotle insists, motion, far from standing-at-its-end, is essentially . Indeed, but this is why Heidegger is careful to remove motion as the object of Aristotles definition; on his interpretation/ paraphrase, what is being defined is not motion, but movedness. On the preceding page Heidegger has distinguished between motion (Bewegung) and movedness (Bewegtheit), characterizing the latter as the essence ( Wesen ) of the former (354). Heideggers paraphrase removes Aristotles definition even further from the sphere of motion by making its object not only movedness, but the essence of movedness. Of course, the essence of motion, and a fortiori the essence of the essence of motion, is not motion. Indeed, Heidegger argues, the essence of motion, movedness in the highest and most genuine sense, is rest (Ruhigkeit, 354). And it is precisely this rest, as the essence of movedness, that Aristotles ostensible definition of motion is defining. Therefore, when Heidegger does mention the kind of that is and that is distinct from rest, he 555
describes it as a narrower sense of , that is, narrower than, and distinct from, the defined by Aristotle at 201b4. This interpretation of Aristotles definition is, unfortunately for Heidegger and fortunately for the future of philosophy, completely untenable. The motion that Aristotles definition attempts to define is beyond question the motion that is and that is distinct from rest. To show this one need only cite a passage which has already been partly quoted above; it is also a passage out of which Heidegger in the 1939 text cites only one sentence, since citing the context would spell disaster for his interpretation. The passage reads:
Its appearing indefinite [ ] is the reason why motion can be classed among beings neither as nor as . For neither that which is capable of being of a certain quantity [ ] nor that which is in actuality of a certain quantity is necessarily moved. And seems on the one hand to be a kind of and on the other to be ; the cause of its being is the capable of which it is the . And this is the reason why it is hard to grasp what motion is. What remains is the way suggested above, i.e., that it [motion] is a kind of , but the kind we said it was [i.e., the of what is capable qua capable], one indeed hard to see, but nevertheless capable of being. (Phys. 201b27202a3)
This passage makes clear that the aim of Aristotles definition of is precisely to explain its and indefinite character, that is, that which prevents it from being defined either as simply or as simply . This problem is of course left completely unresolved if Aristotles definition is interpreted as being a definition not of at all, but rather of a rest and standing-in-the-end that are supposed to be the essence of motion. Why does Heidegger misinterpret Aristotles definition of as a definition of rest in the sense of havingcome-to-a-stand-in-the-work (or product)? He must do so because only at this price can his characterizations of as das Sich-im-Ende-Haben and of as ImWerk-Stehen be upheld. In other words, only at this price can he persist in denying and the meaning of act or activity as distinct from . And note the significant lesson here: it is precisely the failure to distinguish and from and the product of that renders undefinable and inexplicable. But there is a further question: why does Heidegger persist in his fundamentally inadequate interpretation of and ? The answer has already become apparent: only in this way can Heidegger maintain his thesis that for the Greeks being meant 556
producedness (Hergestelltheit) and presence. And it is indeed this thesis that Heidegger pulls out of his interpretation of the definition of motion, in a move that has become as stale and as predictable as the trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat: The having-itself-in-its-end ( ) is, however, the essence of movedness (that is, the being of what is moved) because this rest [Ruhigkeit] satisfies most purely the essence of , of the self-standing presencing in the look [der in sich stndigen Anwesung im Aussehen] (356). Because Aristotle must a priori have had a conception of being as visible presence ( Aussehen ), the object of Aristotles definition must be transformed from into rest 46 and from something hard to see into a stable and unchanging object of vision. 47 But that this thesis regarding the Greek interpretation of Being can once again be maintained only at the cost of misinterpretation and even inversion of what Aristotle says should be sufficient reason to reject it once and for all in favor of liberating the very different direction in which the texts can guide our thinking. Heidegger could still be correct in maintaining that ordinary Greeks had an interpretation of being as constant presence born of the anxiety that what is would cease to be present (see GA 18, 28990, 297, 367; also 353). Since this fear, however, can probably with equal justice be attributed to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese, as well as modern day Americans and Russians, rather than speak of a metaphysics of presence as a historical phenomenon beginning with the Greeks, we should probably instead see such a metaphysics as characterizing any immediate, unreflective experience of the world: a fear of insecurity and instability that leads to an identification of what is with what is had in such a way that it cannot be taken away, what is possessed securely. In contrast, it may belong to the essence of all philosophy, including that of the Greeks, to destroy this security and challenge all naive metaphysics of presence, to expose the indeterminate, potential, and kinetic character of being. It is perhaps only in the modern period that philosophy ceases to do that, and then because its essence is determined from without itself, that is, by mathematical science. But whatever interpretation we wish to put in its place, the conclusion remains that Heideggers interpretation of Aristotle cannot stand. This critique in no way means to deny the great importance of Heidegger for an understanding of the Greeks: in carrying out a continuous and intense dialogue with the Greeks, Heidegger has enabled them to speak to us to today with extraordinary power, relevance, and immediacy. Through Heidegger we learn to engage the Greek thinkers, not with the self-complacency of the historian who charts their primitive anticipations of contemporary wisdom, but rather with the respect 557
of philosophers convinced that we can never escape the immense shadow of the Greek beginning and that philosophy can have no future outside of a constant dialogue with this beginning. Yet it is no denial of this debt owed Heidegger to suggest that some, and perhaps the most important, possibilities for future thought locked in the ancient Greek texts can be liberated only against Heidegger; on the contrary, those who simply repeat Heideggers reading of the Greeks are doing both Heidegger and the Greeks the greatest disservice. Since Heideggers interpretation of the Greeks is inseparable from his own path of thinking, we must ask if his misinterpretation of Aristotles fundamental concepts turned him aside too soon from a barely explored road at the beginning of the metaphysical tradition. What possibilities were missed in Heideggers insistent reduction of the Greek conception of being to presence, a reduction that required interpreting Greek ontology from the perspective of , instead of from the perspective of and ? What is lost in reducing to rest, in failing to preserve its ontological distinctness in contrast to rest? 48 The present critique of Heideggers reading of Aristotle gives a special urgency to a question posed by Paul Ricur: One can in the end ask oneself if Heidegger perceived the hidden resources of a philosophy of being that would replace the transcendental of substance with that of act, as a phenomenology of acting and suffering demands. 49 It is difficult at this point to resist the conclusion that this is precisely what Heidegger failed to perceive.50
Notes
1 Cited in Dominique Janicaud, Heidegger en France I. Rcit (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), 4701. 2 Confronting Heidegger on Logos and Being in Platos Sophist, in Platon und Aristoteles - sub ratione veritatis: Festschrift fr Wolfgang Wieland zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Gregor Damschen, Rainer Enskat, and Alejandro G. Vigo (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2003), 10233. 3 Gesamtausgabe 18 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002); hereafter, cited in the text as GA 18, followed by the page number. 4 Gesamtausgabe 33, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1990); hereafter, cited in the text as GA 33, followed by the page number. 5 Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967), 30971. 6 A discussion of these texts, with the exception of the 1924 course then unavailable, is to be found in Franco Volpi, Heidegger e Aristotele (Padova: Daphne Editrice, 1984), 172203. Volpis quick run-through, however, goes little beyond paraphrase and quotation and certainly makes no attempt to judge critically Heideggers interpretations.
558
Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heidegger is reported in the Brcker Nachschrift of the SS 1926 course, Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie , as saying: Die stellt die hchste Art des Seins dar, die der zukommt ( Gesamtausgabe 22 [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993], 331; hereafter, cited in the text as GA 22, followed by the page number). Jean Beaufret attributes to Heidegger at Cerisy in 1955 the claim that is la plus haute nomination de ltre quait jamais ose la philosophie des Anciens ( Dialogue avec Heidegger Philosophie Grecque [Paris: ditions de Minuit, 1973], 120). 8 See also Ruhe konstitutiv fr dieses Da, d.h. Bedeutsamkeit (380); and 387 where Heidegger calls rest uneigentliche Bewegung because it conceals the - in the Now. 9 Yet Heidegger later in the course returns to a characterization of as Gegenwart. In Aristotles account of motion from the perspective of and in Physics 3, Heidegger finds expressed the character of being-in-the-world and therefore the genuine definition of (clearly understood again as Bedeutsamkeit ) (327). The characterization of that Heidegger is working towards is made clear in the Handschrift: die Gegenwart des Seienden, das ist in dem genannten Mitdasein des einen zum anderen (392). Heidegger therefore now paraphrases Aristotles first definition of motion thus: das Gegenwrtigsein eines Seienden in bestimmtem Bezug zu einem anderen, so zwar, da das erste ist als Seinknnendes durch das zweite (394). This paraphrase is open to the same objection that was made against Heideggers initial interpretation as well as to the objections that follow. 10 This distinction appears already suggested in the Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation) of 1922: , das je bestimmte Verfgenknnen ber, , das in gen[uine] Verwendung Nehmen der Verfgbarkeit, und , das verwendende in Verwahrung Halten dieser Verfgbarkeit ( Gesamtausgabe 62 [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005], 396; hereafter cited in the text as GA 62, followed by page number). 11 In the SS 1926 course, and again in the context of the account of motion, Heidegger defends the definition of as Wirklichkeit ( GA 22, 172, 322), which he interprets as Vorhandensein als Im-Werke-Sein (173). An interesting change, however, is his occasional translation of as Zuhandenheit, so that the definition of motion can be stated as: Zuhandenheit des Bereiten in seiner Bereitheit (173). However, since he can at the same time interpret the definition as Anwesenheit des Vorhandenen in seiner Bereitheit und hinsichtlich dieser (174), Zuhandenheit is clearly being treated as a mode of Anwesenheit and Vorhandenheit (see also 32021). Walter Brcker, on whose Nachschriften of the SS 1924 and SS 1926 courses the Gesamtausgabe editions of these courses partly rely, betrays the influence of Heidegger in his own book on Aristotle when, in explaining the account of motion, he writes: Aber wirklich, gegenwrtig anwesend [my emphasis], ist nicht nur das Rotsein des Seienden, sondern wirklich ist auch das Anders-Sein-Knnen des Seienden. Dies Seinknnen dessen, was das Seiende je gerade nicht ist, gehrt mit zu dem was es je gerade wirklich ist ( Aristoteles , 3rd. ed. [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
7
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Francisco J. Gonzalez Klostermann, 1964], 80). 12 Heidegger can be seen making these questionable interpretative moves in the following texts: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit , Gesamtausgabe 31 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982), 69; Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins, in Gesamtausgabe 6.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), 3689, 375; Wissenschaft und Besinnung, in Vortrge und Aufstze, Gesamtausgabe 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000), 434. At the start of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes an explicit distinction between and as one between activities and products existing apart from the activities that produce them (1094a45). 13 In the SS 1922 course, Phnomenologische Interpretationen Ausgewhlter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, Heidegger identifies with reinste Bewegtheit and reine Zeitigung, apparently making no distinction between and ( GA 62, 10208). At one point Heidegger in citing the definition of the soul in De Anima as the first simply inserts in brackets after , thus suggesting their equivalence (229; see also 336). 14 Heidegger rightly defends against circularity Aristotles definition of motion as , [of what is movable insofar as it is movable] (328). But he here translates as Gegenwart, a translation that, though creating other problems, at least avoids making the definition circular. If, on the other hand, Aristotle used the word instead, as Heidegger earlier claims he should to be more precise, and we were to follow Heidegger in characterizing as , then we would have a circular definition indeed: the motion of what is capable of being moved insofar as it is capable of being moved. 15 The same distinction is implied by the argument in the Nicomachean Ethics that is not a (1173a311174b14). 16 W. D. Ross comments on 201a1011: must here mean actualization, not actuality: it is the passage from potentiality to actuality that is ( Aristotles Physics [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936], 537). But if actualization as the passage from potentiality to actuality is , then this cannot be what means. In this case, the qualification, of what is capable insofar as capable, would be superfluous, since would as such be , and the definition would be viciously circular. The problem with Rosss reading is therefore much greater than that Such a sense of entelecheia is unparalleled in Aristotle: this is the objection of Edward Hussey, who himself translates actuality ( Aristotles Physics Books III and IV [Oxford: Clarendon, 1983], 60). See also Rmi Brague: Lacte qui intervient dans la dfinition du mouvement est actualit et non actualisation (Aristote et la question du monde [Paris: PUF, 1988], 500), and Pierre Aubenque: Le mouvement est moins lactualisation de la puissance, quil nest lacte de la puissance, la puissance en tant quacte, cest--dire en tant que son acte est dtre en puissance ( Le problme de ltre chez Aristote [Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 2002], 454). But Aubenque nevertheless immediately proceeds to make the fatal mistake: Le mouvement, dit ailleurs Aristote, est un acte imparfait, , cest--dire dont lacte mme est de ntre jamais tout fait en acte (454, my
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Whose Metaphysics of Presence? emphasis). Brague, on the other hand, avoids this error: Il lest [ ] moins, prcise ailleurs Aristote, parce quil serait lui-mme un acte imparfait, que parce quil est lacte ( et, en tant que tel, parfait) de quelque chose dimparfait ( Ame III, 7, 431a6 s.) (502, my emphasis). Yet the error remains persistent and widespread. In a recent book we find the following: in welchem Sinne Heidegger und Gadamer energeia auffassen: als Sein, das nur im Werden sein Sein hat. [This is more Gadamer than Heidegger] Hingegen meint energeia bei Aristoteles Werden zum Sein, genesis eis on (Thomas Gutschker, Aristotelische Diskurse: Aristoteles in der politischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhundert [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2002], 222). 17 At Rhet. 1412a9 Aristotle does describe as a , but in the context Aristotle is clearly not using the word in its strictest sense. The passage therefore does not support W. D. Rosss conclusion that and are species of something wider for which Aristotle has no name, and for which he uses now the name of one species, and now that of the other ( Aristotles Metaphysics, vol. 2 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924], 251). 18 Ross, Aristotles Metaphysics, vol. 2, 248. 19 In this passage the definition of motion includes both terms: whenever something not insofar as it is itself but insofar as it is movable, that is motion. 20 Heidegger presumably found support for his interpretation in Hermann Bonitzs 1849 commentary on the Metaphysics . Bonitz also finds at 1048a30 and 1050a2123 a distinction between and , claiming that while the two are very closely related and therefore often not distinguished, nevertheless the former most properly signifies viam while the later most properly signifies finem viae ( Metaphysica Commentarius [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1960], 38788). Yet Bonitz can maintain such a distinction only by making the same mistake Heidegger makes: collapsing the distinction between and . Thus he sees as signifying eam actionem et mutationem, qua qui ex mera possibilitate ad plenam perducitur essentiam (387). This is obviously a definition of and not of . Yet this insistence on a sharp distinction between and and the mistake it presupposes have undoubtedly an impressive pedigree since they can be traced back at least to Simplicius. After reporting that Alexander, Porphyry and Themistios converted into in the definition of motion, as if they were the same for Aristotle (Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria, ed. H. Diels [Berlin: 1882], 414, 2021), Simplicius objects that if Aristotle does sometimes use the word for , he does not mean just any but only the complete kind ( ). The name signifies (414, 37), so that it cannot properly be applied to the incomplete that Simplicius sees as characterizing motion. Simplicius thus insists on reading the word in the defintion of motion at 201a911: Motion being of the incomplete, however, it is not in vain that he [Aristotle] directly called it and not (414, 289). Behind this distinction is the same error made by the contemporary commentators criticized above (note 16): against Porphyrys suggestion that is an and an , Simplicius objects: But if it is the of what exists potentially ( ) and
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Francisco J. Gonzalez what exists potentially is incomplete ( ), then how could the of something incomplete ( ) be a complete ( )? (415, 235). 21 I show elsewhere how Heideggers interpretation of Aristotles account of the good in this course assimilates to : see my Without Good and Evil: Heideggers Purification of Aristotles Ethics, in Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretative Essays , ed. by Drew A. Hyland and John Panteleimon Manoussakis (Indiana University Press, 2006), 12756. Especially significant here is the following passage in which Heidegger, asserting that is the resource for the question What is being?, does not distinguish between and : Die Frage nach dem ist geschpft aus den Bestimmungen der und des GegenwrtigDaseins als primre In-der-Welt-Sein, (GA 18, 329). Robert Bernasconi has observed that Heidegger focuses explicitly on praxis only rarely and his sights are clearly set on poiesis . Futhermore, this is not always the broad conception of poiesis which includes praxis (The Fate of the Distinction between Praxis and Poiesis , in Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing [New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993], 12). If Heidegger does not sharply distinguish praxis from poiesis , this is because, according to Bernasconi, the characterization of praxis in terms of its distinction from poiesis still amounts to a technical interpretation of praxis (21; see also 22). Yet Aristotles definition of motion shows, I suggest, that he understands poiesis / kinesis in the light of energeia/praxis rather than vice versa. Bernasconi sees at Nic. Eth. VI ii 5, 1139a35 b4 a characterization of praxis as the goal of poiesis , a characterization which he sees as subordinating praxis to poiesis (8). But this passage can be interpreted with at least equal plausibility as showing that Aristotle interprets making from the perspective of praxis as an unfulfilled praxis. 22 See Paul Ricur, Ngativit et affirmation originaire, in Aspects de la dialectique (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 1956), 10124; and Soi-mme comme un autre (Paris: ditions de Seuil, 1990), 364. In the former important essay, after a critique of modern philosophies that privilege negation and the nothing, like that of Sartre, for presupposing a limited and impoverished conception of being as thinghood and essence (120), Ricur concludes: Sous la pression du ngatif, des expriences en ngatif, nous avons reconqurir une notion de ltre qui soit acte plutt que forme , affirmation vivante, puissance dexister et de faire exister (124). See Dominique Janicauds description of Ricur as proposing une ontologie de lagir qui a pour fin le bien vivre au sens dAristote et pour laquelle ltre lui-mme se dcouvre et se dfinit comme agir (471). Janicaud also notes how Ricur emphasizes the dunamis-energeia sense of being in Aristotle against Heideggers reduction of being to presence (4723). 23 Heidegger discusses briefly the characterization of in the Nicomachean Ethics as not a and not existing in time (GA 18, 244-45), but he does not reflect on the peculiar relation of to time and concludes: Dieser Charakter, da sie keine ist, charakterisiert sie als eine Bestimmung der Gegenwrtigkeit des Daseins als solchen (245). This inference from keine to Gegenwrtigkeit is precisely the inference I want to bring into
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Whose Metaphysics of Presence? question. 24 This is understandably a text to which Ricur attaches much importance: see Soi-mme comme un autre , 356 and 364 n. 1. For an account of the strange history of this texts transmission, see Brague, Aristote et la question du monde , 45461. Bragues is probably the best philosophical interpretation of this text currently available, at least in part because he recognizes the texts crucial importance. 25 We do find at Physics 249b29 the phrase: . The context, however, is the continuity of motion as a process, not its relation to its . This continuity shows that motion is indeed an , but without collapsing the distinction between the two. See Wolfgang Wieland, Die aristotelische Physik, 3rd. ed. (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 332. 26 This interpretation is the one advanced by Pierre Aubenque: Dans le cas d , ce qui demeure pens travers la formation savante du mot, est lactivit artisanale, plus prcisment luvre ( ). Certes, lacte nest pas lactivit, et Aristote prendra bien soin de le distinguer de mouvement, mais il en est le rsultat. Il nest pas le devenant, mais le devenu, non pas le btir, mais lavoir-bti, non pas le prsent ou laoriste du mouvoir, mais le parfait de lavoirm et de lavoir-t-mu (Le problme de ltre chez Aristote, 440). Yet Aubenque must admit in a note (440, n. 4) that Aristotle does not actually say this. Instead, Aristotle claims that is simultaneously past perfect and present . So how can Aubenque interpret so against the grain of the text? Because, no matter what Aristotle might say, his extension of to en contredit lorigine technologique, selon laquelle la rfrence l uvre est immdiatement presente (44041, n. 4). Despite his critique of Heidegger in the next note (441, n. 1) Aubenque here follows Heidegger in considering the etymology of a word more important to its interpretation than its actual use and analysis in the Aristotelian text. Some salutary words of Paul Ricur are worth citing in this context: Et cette proximit entre nergia et ergon na-t-elle pas encourag maints commentateurs donner un modle artisanal la srie entire: entlcheia, nergia, ergon ? Ce qui, en banalisant le propos, rendrait peu prs inutile toute enterprise de rappropriation de lontologie de lacte-puissance au bnfice de ltre du soi (Soi-mme comme un autre, 355, n. 2). 27 See parallel passages at Soph. el. 178a911 and De sensu 446b2. 28 Brague expresses well the paradox: Lacte nen finit pas de finir, il cesse sans cesse (470). At one point in his manuscript for the SS 1926 course, Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, Heidegger appears to see this crucial point: : 1. nicht nur berhaupt anwesend. 2. nicht nur beweglich, , , 3. sondern von ihm selbst her seinem Wesen nach nur im Wirken seiend. , fertig und doch nicht Aufhren der vordrnglichen Anwesenheit ; und doch kein Aufhren, sondern gerade in ihr ist Sein. Ich habe gesehen und so sehe ich. Ich bin glcklich geworden und bin es so gerade. Ich habe es erlebt und lebe jetzt so ( GA 22, 175). But Heidegger does not appear to see the extent to which this challenges a characterization of as Im-Werke-Sein (173), a characterization of as Fertig-sein , and, finally, the characterization of both as modes of Anwesenheit and Vorhandenheit.
563
Francisco J. Gonzalez Similarly, Brcker, while rightly claiming that das Sehen von etwas [ist] auch kein Aufenthalt, kein Stillstand, sondern ruhige Ttigkeit (85), still proceeds to make the mistake of identifying it with the end of motion and thus with what Heidegger calls Fertig-sein: die Energie in Gegensatz zur Bewegung sich bestimmt als Ruhe , u. z. nicht als Aufenthalt auf dem Wege zu einem Ende, sondern als Ruhe im Ziel und Ende einer Bewegung: Entelechie (85). In the SS 1922 course, Heidegger, after citing 1048b1921, interprets it as speaking of a Bewegung die selbst in ihrem Ende steht, am Ende gerade ist! die noch oder gerade dann Bewegung ist, wenn sie an ihrem Ende ist! Am Ende sein und gerade dann Bewegung sein (106). But Aristotle in this passage is speaking of , not of , and for a good reason: it is precisely the fact that comes to an end when it reaches its end that distinguishes it as such from . 29 Capturing in a translation the sense of is difficult because, as Brague rightly warns, Il faut se garder de la rduire trop vite la contmporanit que suggrait la traduction par en mme temps. Dans cet hama, le pass est intgr au prsent non pour y tre aboli, mais en tant que tel (473). Does not this then defy the conception of time to which Heidegger insists on restricting the Greeks? 30 Despite otherwise reiterating Heideggers view that Aristotle sest born suivre le (108) and thus is led to characterize being as , Beaufret appears to go beyond Heidegger in seeing Aristotle as recognizing the limits of language and the categories in the face of the phenomenon of (11819). 31 As Brague, for example, argues (47492). 32 Heideggers interpretation, to the extent that it appears in the Einfhrung in die Metaphysik and other later texts, was already brought into question by Pierre Aubenque in an important note to Le problme de ltre chez Aristote (first published in 1943): Nous ne pouvons accepter linterprtation que M. Heidegger propose du mot . Voulant juste titre viter la msinterprtation moderne de l entelechie comme finalit , il en vient liminer du mot toute ide de fin , au sens dachvement, daccomplissement de linachev, pour ne plus retenir que le sens statique daccomplissment toujours dj accompli de pure prsence de ce qui est prsent Il sagit, certes, dune prsence, mais dune prsence advenue, devenue . La traduction moderne d acte nest pas un oubli du sens originel, mais lui reste, pour une fois, fidle (441, n. 1). Two aspects of this critique are on the mark: (1) the criticism of Heideggers elimination of all idea of fin from , his insistence that nicht Ziel und nicht Zweck, sondern Ende bedeutet ( Einfhrung in die Metaphysik , 3rd. ed. [Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1966], 46; for a critique of Heideggers defense of this view in the SS 1924 course, see my Without Good and Evil: Heideggers Purification of Aristotles Ethics , 13134; (2) and the defense of the translation of as act against Heideggers interpretation of it as das Sich-in-derEndung (Grenze)-halten (wahren) ( Einfhrung , 46), an interpretation Heidegger uses to support his thesis that for the Greeks being meant Stndigkeit. (In contrast, Jean Beaufret follows Heidegger in the translation of as actus claiming that it constitutes a wall between us and the Greeks [135].) But Aubenques critique of
564
Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heidegger is not radical enough because it follows Heidegger in interpreting and as moments within movement (i.e., as results or aims of movement) and thus in ignoring or greatly minimizing Aristotles distinction between and : see the critique of Aubenque on this point in note 5. In this respect, the interpretation of as presence having-arrived, havingbecome is no better than the interpretation of simply as presence. 33 Christopher P. Longs otherwise very insightful account of the ontological significance of in Aristotle seems to fall into this error: he appears to assume that only potentiality and matter could prevent from being some static actus purus, thereby failing to note that the without matter that is the unmoved mover is interpreted by Aristotle as , to the extent of being described as life, pleasure, and happiness (The Ethical Culmination of Aristotles Metaphysics, in Epoch 8 [2003]: see 128 and 133). It is for this reason that Long, in looking for a model of dynamic, nonuniversal knowledge that can do justice to , turns to instead of to the of the unmoved mover. Long provides a detailed defense of this thesis in The Ethics of Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian Legacy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004); but see my critique in Form in Aristotle: Oppressive Universal or Individual Act? Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 26, 2 (2005): 17998. 34 Ricur rightly stresses the importance of preserving the tension between and and from this perspective criticizes the reduction of to facticity (Soi-mme comme un autre, 3645). In contrast, Heidegger in the 1930 course insists with regard to that Unser Fremdwort Energie im Sinne von Kraft hat damit nichts zu tun. bedeutet zumal als philosophischer Ausdruck fr Existenz, Wirklichkeit, Vorhandensein bei Aristoteles alles andere als Kraft (GA 31, 67). 35 Heidegger at one point asserts that according to the Megarian position, Nichtvollzug des Vermgens gleich Abwesenheit, gleich Nichtvorhandensein desselben (184). Judging from what Aristotle wrote, what the Megarians are claiming instead is that Nichtvollzug des Vermgens gleich Unvermgen. 36 Heidegger at one point refers to the emphasis [die Betonung] of (188) in the text. What emphasis? What one finds in the text is Aristotle occasionally using this expression without calling attention to it and without deriving from it any philosophical conclusions for the argument. The emphasis is all Heideggers. 37 Even if it is legitimate to ask, as Heidegger does earlier in the course, In welcher Weise ist denn nun das () , das Sein als vielfach Gesagtes, , irgendwie gemeinsam fr die Vielen? ( GA 33, 31), this certainly does not justify the conflation of a categorial sense of being with being as . 38 Heidegger derives the following characterization of beingcapable from his excellent phenomenological description of the runner: Wirklich-vermgend-sein ist das bereitschafterfllte ImStande-sein-zu, dem nur noch die Enthemmung in den Vollzug fehlt (218). This characterization of being-capable is without question defensible and illuminating. The problem is that Heidegger
565
Francisco J. Gonzalez does not stop here. Instead, he proceeds to bring this definition in line with the supposedly Greek conception of being by identifying ImStande-sein-zu with the having of a as something present (219). If we are to remain faithful to what Aristotle says even in going beyond what he says, we must insist that Im-Stande-sein-zu is itself, not the being-present or being-at-hand of a . 39 Bonitz, though not seeing this as eliminating all the problems, suggests that the viciousness of the circle in the definition is minimized if , quod definit, de qualitate quadam rei inhaerente, , quod ad definiendum adscisit, de interna cogitandi repugnantia intellexerimus (387). Ross takes the same way out (245), though his comments appear to go further in seeing the meaning of logical (im)possibility in both and , something that seems hardly possible in the first case, given the context. 40 According to the editor of GA 33 (226), Rosss commentary is one of the texts Heidegger consulted for the 1931 course. 41 When Heidegger comes upon Aristotles example of , he is forced to make the important concession that , haben hier schon nicht mehr die ursprnglich ganz enge Bezogenheit auf , aber immer doch die Bedeutung des Vollzugs (204). In this case one must of course even question the translation Vollzug , which suggests a process towards some outcome. Yet this concession does not stop Heidegger from translating as Am-Werke-Sein. 42 At one point in the course, Heidegger asks how the Megarians can appeal to when they presumably, as Eleatics, denied the existence of motion (1712). Perhaps the solution is that is not understood as motion. Heidegger himself raises the possibility, though only in passing and without pursuing it, that , which he translate here as Vollzug, is perhaps something other than motion ([ ist vielleicht etwas anderes?], 174). 43 Enrico Berti also makes this objection to Heideggers reading, rightly insisting that for Aristotle the primary meaning of is not that according to movement, but that of activity (Aristotele nel Novecento [Roma: Laterza, 1992], 103, 11011). See also Long, who for this reason finds in Aristotle an undermining of the metaphysics of productive comportment (138, n. 39). 44 At one point in speaking of , Heidegger writes: Vollzug ist Ausbung , also Anwesenheit von bung und Gebtheit (185). Here, as in other cases, the also expresses not what necessarily follows but, rather, what Heidegger needs. Why must Ausbung be interpreted as the presence of bung ? Only to fit Heideggers thesis concerning the Greek conception of being. Heidegger himself sees that this interpretation is not necessary when he remarks that Vollzug is not simply Anwesenheit : vielmehr ist der Vollzug Ausbung und als solche, wenn berhaupt , Anwesenheit von Einbung (191, my emphasis). This possibility that Vollzug is not Anwesenheit at all is quickly passed over and not allowed to interfere with Heideggers thesis. 45 Beaufret follows Heideggers later interpretation in affirming the synonymy of and only at the cost of denying that the former means act and identifying both with what is achieved or completed: Cest bien pourquoi , o lon entend , et , o lon entend , sont synonymes,
566
Whose Metaphysics of Presence? ntant pas plus un but qu nest une action ou un acte, mais les deux disant lun et lautre que quelque chose est achev et non seulement en cours, ou mme moins encore, au sens o louvrage de la menuiserie ne peut pas mme encore, dans larbre de la fort, tre dit en cours (114). Beaufret therefore also follows Heidegger in claiming that and are understood from the perspective of movement (1145). Heideggers thesis that being for the Greeks was presence is accordingly accepted without question: see page 138. 46 Thus also in the Beitrge zur Philosophie Heidegger can claim that Aristoteles begreift erstmals griechisch von Bestndigkeit und Anwesenheit her ( ) das Wesen der Bewegung (Gesamtausgabe 65, 2nd. ed. [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994], 193) only by asserting that ens actu ist gerade das Seiende in der Ruhe, nicht in der Aktion, das Insichgesammelte und in diesem Sinne voll Anwesende (194). 47 Brague rightly sees in the phrase a surpassing both of the conception of knowledge according to the paradigm of vision and of a conception of being as what-is-there ( ) as a thing ( ) (5026). He even writes: le paradigme visuel qui domine une bonne partie de la pense grecque y trouve laccroc, peuttre unique, o il commence se dmailler (505). I would deny, however, that this paradigm dominates Greek thought to the extent Brague suggests. Brague argues that our only access to is not vision, but (5046), which he however distinguishes from both predication and naming (506). This is presumably because we can speak of only from within, as Brague suggests earlier: Nous comprenons lacte, non pas du dehors, mais quand nous nous plaons lintrieur de luiformule dailleurs provisoire, car il faut comprendre que nous ne nous y sommes jamais mis, que nous y avons toujours t, que lacte est ce dont nous ne pouvons jamais sortir (495). 48 One text that demands reflection here is the Beitrge (2934). Heidegger here uses the language of Aristotles definition of , despite his characterization of it as outlived metaphysical language, to express the essence of Being. What needs to be considered here is what is lost in this appropriation. An answer is perhaps to be found in Patockas critique of Heidegger from the perspective of a phenomenology of movement: for discussion and documentation, see Renaud Barbaras, La phnomnologie du movement chez Patocka, in Phnomnologie: un sicle de philosophie , eds. Pascal Dupond and Laurent Cournaire (Paris: Ellipses, 2002), 12937; especially 135. 49 On peut enfin se demander si Heidegger a aperu les ressources que pouvait receler une philosophie de ltre qui mettrait le transcendantal de lacte la place de celui de la substance, comme le demande une phnomnologie de lagir et du ptir (Soi-mme comme un autre, 380, my translation). One of the resources Ricur has in mind here is an ethical one. This is evident not only in Soi-mme comme un autre but also in the much earlier essay cited above, where Ricur suggests that only an ontology of the act, as opposed to both the privileging of negation in existentialism and a philosophy of essences, can ground respect for the other and thus ethics: si lexistentialisme privilgie le moment du refus, du dfi, de larrachment au donn, du dsengluement, cest que dune part le
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Francisco J. Gonzalez moment de nantisation du donn est toujours obscurci par une volont coupable d annihilation dautrui. Mais la position de lexistence par lexistence, de lexistence de lautre comme condition de mon existence pleine et entire, ne me condamne pas une philosophie des essences mais moriente vers une philosophie de lacte dxister. Lillusion de lexistentialisme est double: il confond la dngation avec les passions qui lenferment dans le ngatif, il croit que lautre alternative la libert-nant cest ltre ptrifi dans lessence (Ngativit et affirmation originaire, 119). One must wonder to what an extent such a criticism applies to Heidegger. 50 This paper was written with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
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Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2006) Vol. XLIV

Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heideggers Interpretation of Energeia and Dunamis in Aristotle

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

Whose Metaphysics of Presence?

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