Review of Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy (original) (raw)
HEIDEGGER'S HISTORICISATION OF ARISTOTELIAN BEING
The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2013
This article examines Heidegger’s early work concerned with establishing a fundamental ontology. Specifically, it examines Heidegger’s interpretation and presentation of Aristotle’s own ontological thought. Given Heidegger’s predetermined assessment of being as historically determined, it is sought to show how that predetermined view influences Heidegger’s presentation of Aristotle’s metaphysical work. The wider implications of Heidegger’s assertion that being human is irretrievably historical are also considered.
Aristotelian and Heideggerian Time: A Comparative Study
This paper mainly questions the nature of time. This is a humble attempt to unfold the complexities of the notion of time, with the aid of Aristotle's genius and Heidegger's ingenuity. Comparing and contrasting the views of these thinkers, the paper tries to make a synthesis out of the two, and concludes by applying the synthesis into one's own life. Thus, this research work is not just aiming for a clearer understanding of time, but also for a deeper understanding of life.
This paper contributes to the genealogical investigation of Heidegger's notion of Befindlichkeit as defined in Sein und Zeit. The word Befindlichkeit first appears in Heidegger's work as a translation of the Aristotelian notion of διάθεσις. The philosophical overlaps must be explored: to what extent does the structure and operation that Heidegger ascribes to Befindlichkeit in its relation to Stimmung overlap with the operation he identifies in Aristotle's notion of ἕξις and πάθος? According to my reading there is a certain, albeit complex, form of continuity. The essay shows how Heidegger's analysis of Befindlichkeit in Sein und Zeit retrieves certain characteristics from Aristotle's ἕξις whilst clearly rejecting others, i.e. those characteristics which pertain to natural beings present--at--hand rather than Dasein. Dieser Aufsatz leistet einen Beitrag zur genealogischen Forschung des Begriffs der Befindlichkeit, wie Heidegger ihn in Sein und Zeit bestimmt. Der Begriff der Befindlichkeit erscheint erstmals in Heideggers Werk als eine Übersetzung des aristotelischen Begriffs der διάθεσις. Die philosophischen Gemeinsamkeiten müssen hinsichtlich der folgenden Frage untersucht werden: Bis zu welchem Grad überschneidet sich die Struktur, die Heidegger der Befindlichkeit in ihrer Beziehung zu Stimmung zuschreibt, mit der Struktur, die er in den aristotelischen Begriffen der ἕξις und des πάθος erkennt? In meiner Interpretation gibt es eine bestimmte, jedoch komplexe Form von Kontinuität. Der Aufsatz zeigt wie Heideggers Analyse der Befindlichkeit in Sein und Zeit bestimmte strukturelle Merkmale von Aristoteles' Begriff der ἕξις übernimmt und dabei andere Merkmale, die sich auf Vorhandenes in der Natur beziehen und nicht auf das Dasein, klar zurückweist.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
This chapter examines the relationship between the Aristotelian philosophers (30 bce to 200 ce) and the so-called Second Sophistic. It discusses how the study of Aristotle’s works experienced a revival, leading to a new text-based approach to his corpus. The evidence for the main protagonists of those interested in Aristotle is fragmentary. Some were leading thinkers of the school (Andronicus of Rhodes), others eclectic readers of Aristotle (Xenarchus of Seleucia, Galen of Pergamum). The views of both styles of scholar on Aristotle arose mostly in a didactic context, clarifying the texts to students. Thus philosophers began to engage in scholarly commentary as a standard way to practice philosophy. This trend quickly culminated in the running commentary, the prime example of which is the work of Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca. 200 ce), who also had connections to the imperial court.
Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being
2007
A fi rst generation of Heidegger's students were quick to identify the importance for him of Aristotle's philosophy. Th ey had sat in his lectures and seminars from the early twenties, fi rst in Freiburg im-Breisgau, in Marburg, and again in Freiburg: they heard Heidegger's protracted discussions of Aristotle's texts. Th e title of one set of lectures, from 1921 give a sense of the direction of the reading: Phenomenological Interpretation of Aristotle: Introduction to Phenomenological Research (GA 61, 1984). Aristotle's writings were to be read as a source for following through and radicalising the phenomenological innovations of Edmund Husserl (1856-1938). Heidegger himself, in the late essay 'On Time and Being' (1962), testifi es to the importance for his earliest development of the gift, in 1907, of a study by Franz Brentano: On the manifold senses of being for Aristotle (1862). Th is preoccupation with the manifold senses of being, which must all the same be thought as a unity, can be linked to the diff erences between the unity of logos, as Rede, and its various modes of being said, as Gerede, which is structural to the development of the argument of Being and Time (1927). Th is distinction between Gerede and Rede informs the analysis of the diff erences between the tendency to fallenness into the world, and an authentic self-attestation of Dasein, in its ontical and ontological distinctiveness, as having a relation to its own being. In this fi rst generation of students, the work of Helena Weiss, Hans Georg Gadamer, Otto Poeggeler, and Hannah Arendt all attest to the challenge posed by Heidegger's writings. Th e task is to return to Aristotle, under the guidance of a retrieval of the question of the meaning of being, both to work through to an understanding of the unity of Aristotle's thinking, and to develop alternatives in the twentieth century to the dead ends of Cartesian dualism. By contrast, a second and a third generation of students have access to the famous early lectures and seminars only by second hand, by means of rumour, and in the outline of a critique of Aristotle, indicated, but not carried out in Being and Time. Th e proposal to destroy the history of ontology sits uneasily alongside this claim, from section 29, about Aristotle's Rhetoric: 'Contrary to the traditional orientation, according to which rhetoric is conceived as the kind of thing we "learn in school", this work of Aristotle must be taken as the fi rst systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of Being with one another.' (SZ 138, MR 178).Th e destruction of Aristotelian ontology is to reveal an Aristotle who contributes to reposing the question of the meaning of being, and to an analysis of the everydayness of Dasein. Th is opens up a duplicity in Aristotle's texts, they are to be read against the grain, to release a hermeneutical component, in addition to the question concerning the unity, or meaning, articulating the multiplicity in being.
Heidegger's Aristotelian Ethics
Ethics and Phenomenology
Two central objections to any attempt to offer a Heideggerian account of ethics can be summed up as follows: First, Heidegger explicitly claims in several places in Being and Time that he is not interested in providing an evaluative analysis of the modes of Dasein's existence. His interest, rather, is in fundamental ontology-in providing an account of the structural features of Dasein's existence. Second, if Heidegger were interested in providing such an evaluative account (or if he in fact is providing one given the evaluative terminology he uses), the results would be ethically disastrous. As one familiar line of interpretation has it, Heidegger's account of Dasein privileges the "authentic" life over the inauthentic life. At the conclusion of Being and Time, one is left with the distinct impression that an authentic life-one in which Dasein is transparent to itself, and has separated itself from the public world of average everydayness-is to be preferred over the manner of existence characterized by "fallenness." 1 The problem with this, the criticism runs, is that Heidegger has committed himself to an individualism that is anathema to recognizing our legitimate moral obligations to those other human beings we come across in our attempts to be authentic.