The Beginning of Western Philosophy

Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides

Martin Heidegger, Richard Rojcewicz

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780253015532
• eBook ISBN: 9780253015617
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Through a close reading of two presocratic philosophers, Heidegger demonstrates that all of Western philosophy is rooted in the question of Being.
This volume comprises a lecture course given at the University of Freiburg in 1932, five years after the publication of Being and Time. During this period, Heidegger was at the height of his creative powers, which are on full display in this clear and imaginative text.
Heidegger analyses two of the earliest philosophical source documents, fragments by Greek thinkers Anaximander and Parmenides. Heidegger develops their common theme of Being and non-being and shows that the question of Being is indeed the origin of Western philosophy. His engagement with these Greek texts is as much of a return to beginnings as it is a potential reawakening of philosophical wonder and inquiry in the present.

PART ONE

The dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th–5th century

Introduction

§1. The mission and the dictum

a) Cessation and beginning

[1] Our mission: the cessation of philosophizing?¹ That is, the end of metaphysics; by way of an originary questioning of the “meaning” (truth) of Beyng.²

We want to seek out the beginning of Western philosophy (cf. p. 31!).—Western philosophy takes its start in the 6th century BC with the Greeks, a minor, relatively isolated, and purely self-dependent(??) people. The Greeks of course knew nothing of the “Western” and the “West.” These terms express a primarily geographical concept, contrasted against the East, the Oriental, the Asiatic. At the same time, however, the rubric “Western” is a historiological concept and signifies today’s European history and culture, which were inaugurated by the Greeks and especially by the Romans and which were essentially determined and borne by Judeo-Christianity.

Had the Greeks known something of this Western future, a beginning of philosophy would never have come about. Rome, Judaism, and Christianity completely transformed and adulterated the inceptual—i.e., Greek—philosophy.

b) The dictum in the customary translations

We want to seek out the beginning of Western philosophy. What we find therein is little. And this little is incomplete. The tradition ordinarily calls Thales of Miletus the first philosopher. Much is reported about him and his teaching. But nothing is handed down directly.

After Thales, Anaximandros (ca. 610–545) is called the second philosopher. Preserved for us are a few of his words and statements. The one reads:

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστί τοῖς οὖσι καὶ τὴν ϕθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν.

From Simplicius (Commentary on the Physics) based on Theophrastus (Φυσικῶν δόξαι).³

In translation: “But whence things take their origin, thence also proceeds their passing away, according to necessity; for they pay one another penalty and retribution for their wickedness according to established time.” Diels.⁴

“Whence things have their origination, thence must they also perish, according to necessity; for they must pay retribution and be judged for their injustices, according to the order of time.” Nietzsche.⁵

____________

1. Cf. Überlegung II, 89. {In: Überlegungen II–VI. GA [Gesamtausgabe] 94.}

2. [Archaic form of “Being,” to render das Seyn, archaic form of das Sein.—Trans.]

3. {Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria. Edidit H. Diels. Berlin: Reimer, 1882. Phys. 1:2, 24. Cf. also Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker. Griechisch und Deutsch von Hermann Diels. Vol. 1, 4th. ed. Berlin: Weidmann, 1922. Heidegger underlines the words τοῖς οὖσι. Diels has a comma after οὖσι.}

4. {This translation is not in Diels. The 4th edition of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker reads: “But whence their birth is, thence also proceeds their dying, according to necessity. For they pay one another penalty and retribution for their wickedness according to the order of time.” Cf. also the afterword to Heidegger’s “Der Spruch des Anaximander,” GA78, 339ff.}

5. {Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen. In Nietzsche’s Werke: Gesamtausgabe in Großoktav, 19 vols. Nachgelassene Werke, vol. 10. Leipzig: Naumann, 1903, 26.}

Chapter I

The first phase of the interpretation

A. THE FIRST SECTION OF THE STATEMENT

§2. The theme of the dictum: beings as a whole

a) The meaning of τὰ ὄντα

About what is Anaximandros speaking here? About τὰ ὄντα. τὰ ὄντα—plural of the neuter τὸ ὄν—the being; plural: the beings. Yet from early on, already in Sanskrit, the neuter plural does not simply mean a multiplicity of individuals; instead, it signifies the many individuals in their unity: hence “that which is,” thereby thinking of that which is [das Seiende] as particularized into many individual beings, into the beings [die Seienden]. We could use “the beings” as a translation of τὰ ὄντα only provided we recognize there is no question here of arbitrary, individual beings. More clearly at first: singular—that which is—and this indeed now requires some comments.

That which is—about beings pure and simple (cf. below p. 35, sec. a, τὸ ἐόν)—not about just any arbitrary individual extant thing in its accidental obtrusiveness, e.g., the sea; also not the being we call the land; also not what is in the sea, on land, in the air, not the plants and animals; also not humans and their work, their trouble and joy, their success, their triumph, their death—all such is a being, not that which is. Even all this totaled up does not constitute that which is. For as soon as we start to seize any being whatever and ascribe something further to it, we have just as immediately wrenched that individual out of that which is. We do not first of all have nothingness and then the individual beings; on the contrary, first and last we have that which is. The latter is not simply all individual beings thrust together; it is more than all these and then again at the same time less. That which is means that which is before and around us, below us and above us, and includes ourselves. That which is: not this being and not that one and not everything together, but more than “everything.” Then what?

[2] Is there | something that could be “more” than “everything”? “Everything” does not tolerate still “more” outside of itself. “Everything” includes each thing and leaves nothing out. But if, for example, we carefully take apart and lay out “everything” that pertains to a plant, viz., root, stalk, leaves, blossoms, and if we omit nothing, then does all this together give us “the plant”? No; something is still missing. The whole of the plant does not result from thrusting together all the pieces but is on the contrary prior to all the components, even if these are not expressly present at hand but are, e.g., still in the bud or in the seed grain. Everything that pertains to the plant is not the plant as a being, is not the whole being.

And so we will say: that which is—if it means more than all individuals, then it means the whole of beings.

We do not mean thereby that the whole of beings would be the same as, for instance, an immense plant or some other “organism.” The wholeness of a whole is not simply and necessarily the wholeness of an “organism.” Yet even if we take this reservation to heart, may we then equate “that which is” (τὰ ὄντα) with the whole of beings?

For could a person ever grasp all beings individually and then gather them together? Even if it were possible to grasp all particular beings individually and go through them all, would we not continually have to set aside the ones already grasped? How could a person claim to grasp all beings at one stroke? We saw, however, that that which is does not mean everything but, instead, means the whole of beings. Nevertheless, is not the whole of beings even less graspable? For that, the person would need to utterly encompass beings, stand outside of them and beyond the whole, and not belong therein himself. Outside the whole of beings is only nothingness. “That which is”—if we take this expression to mean the whole of beings, is it then not precisely vacuous? To be sure! That which is means for us therefore not the whole of beings—neither this nor “all beings.”

Thus we said advisedly: “that which is” is more and at the same time less than all beings. More, insofar as it somehow proceeds to the whole; less—how so?

In this way: insofar as there is not at first or ever any necessity to grasp all beings in order to understand truly what was said. Indeed what is not decisive is the magnitude in number or in scope of the beings we explicitly know; and how much we scientifically know is utterly inconsequential. The farmer, whose “world” might strike the city dweller as narrow and poor, in the end possesses “that which is” much more intimately and immediately. The farmer’s experience proceeds quite differently into the whole and comes quite differently out of the whole than the agitated squirming of the city dweller, who clings only to the “telephone and radio.” The smallest and narrowest sphere of known beings has nevertheless its expansion into the whole; even narrowness is always still an expanse—an expansion into the whole. On the other hand, the widest variety is largely lacking in expanse, so much so that it—as mere scatterings and their running on and on—never even amounts to a narrowness.

That which is is always less than all beings and is also not the whole of beings purely and simply encompassed and intuited. It is rather, as we say, beings as a whole—in that way indeed more, essentially more than each and every summation, even the greatest possible.

τὰ ὄντα—that which is—means beings as a whole. From this is to be distinguished all beings as well as the whole of beings. Yet let us not fool ourselves. We do not have a fully clear understanding of what is meant here. Nevertheless, something is indicated for which we have a quite sure feeling. This “as a whole” is so ungraspable in an inceptual way precisely because it is constantly what is closest and most familiar to us: we always skip over it. Indeed, even further, for the most part we unwittingly misinterpret it and render it unrecognizable. In order to experience that which is, i.e., beings as a whole, we do not need to undertake gymnastically any sort of mysterious contortion of thought and representation. Quite to the contrary, we only need to loosen somewhat our everyday shackling to what is currently obtrusive and incidental—and already we will have explicitly experienced [3] what is astonishing in experience. | To be sure, only quite roughly, but this “roughly,” this “as a whole,” is in itself something completely determinate and essential, even if we are now still far removed from comprehending it.

Let this be a provisional elucidation of what Anaximandros is speaking about. We will now ask: 2) What does he actually say about it, about “beings”? “Whence (that out of which) beings step forth—precisely into this also their receding happens according to necessity.”

b) Beings in γένεσις καὶ ϕθορά

a) Stepping forth and receding pertain to beings. α) γένεσις in general β) ἠ γένεσις ἡ ϕθορά [the stepping-forth the receding]. γένεσις and ϕθορά are readily taken as “coming to be and passing away,” and so in short: alteration, becoming other, or in general: becoming. That is very understandable and is not artificially formulated. For us, however, the question is whether the ready translation does not unwittingly introduce something un-Greek into the content of the whole statement. Here it is in fact so; stepping forth means originating arrival, arriving emergence, self-manifestation, appearance;¹ correspondingly, receding means disappearance, withdrawal, going away. So what is the difference between these and coming to be and passing away? We are accustomed to think of coming to be as development, as a sequence of processes in which the earlier ones are always the causes of the following ones, as concatenation, transition, progression, as direction, as from … to, out of … into; and correspondingly we think of passing away as downfall and annihilation. For the Greeks, what is decisive is not the causal sequence, the coming to be out of and through one another, but purely and simply the stepping-forth, the looming up. Our term for it in short will be appearance. (Cf. below p. 8; need to carefully set aside every relation to later meanings of the word as a technical term, even the relation to the Kantian concept, although Kant does, within certain limits, use “appearance” genuinely and originarily. It is only because “appearance” becomes the counter concept to “thing-in-itself” that we cannot appeal here to Kant.)

Appearance is emergence: not the becoming seen and apprehended of something, but a character of the happening of beings as such. Only subsequently applicable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Introduction
• Part One: The Dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th–5th Century
• Part Two: Interposed Considerations
• Part Three: The “Didactic Poem” of Parmenides of Elea, 6th–5th Century
• Appendix: Drafts and Plans for the Lecture Course
• Editor’s Afterword
• German-English Glossary
• English-German Glossary