Martin Heidegger, Andrew Mitchell, François Raffoul
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Four Seminars
Martin Heidegger, Andrew Mitchell, François Raffoul
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The philosopher presents a stimulating overview of his work, its intellectual roots, and its relationship to the work of other twentieth century thinkers. In Four Seminars, Heidegger reviews the entire trajectory of his thought and offers unique perspectives on fundamental aspects of his work. First published in French in 1976, these seminars were translated into German with Heidegger's approval and reissued in 1986 as part of his Gesamtausgabe, volume 15. Topics considered include the Greek understanding of presence, the ontological difference, the notion of system in German Idealism, the power of naming, the problem of technology, danger, and the event. Heidegger's engagements with his philosophical forebears—Parmenides, Heraclitus, Kant, and Hegel—continue in surprising dialogues with his contemporaries—Husserl, Marx, and Wittgenstein. While providing important insights into how Heidegger conducted his lectures, these seminars show him in his maturity, reflecting back on his philosophical path.
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The text serving as a basis for the work is Kant’s “The Sole Possible Proof for a Demonstration of the Existence of God” (1763), more precisely, the “First Observation: Of Existence As a Whole.”
This seminar aims to elucidate Kant’s text indirectly. Indeed, one must keep in view that Kant himself altered his interpretation of being twenty years later.
The path our mediate elucidation will take is the question of being, the question concerning being, along with how it has unfolded from Being and Time to today.
So we pose the question: what does the “question of being” mean? For, as a question, the question of being already offers numerous possibilities for misunderstanding—something confirmed by the continual failure to understand the book Being and Time.
What does “the question of being” mean? One says “being” and from the outset one understands the word metaphysically, i.e., from out of metaphysics. However, in metaphysics and its tradition, “being” means: that which determines a being insofar as it is a being. As a result, metaphysically the question of being means: the question concerning the being as a being, or otherwise put: the question concerning the ground of a being.
To this question, the history of metaphysics has given a series of answers. As an example: ἐνέργεια. Here reference is made to the Aristotelian answer to the question “What is the being as a being?”—an answer which runs ἐνέργεια, and not some ὑποκείμενον. For its part, the ὑποκείμενον is an interpretation of beings and by no means an interpretation of being. In the most concrete terms, ὑποκείμενον is the presencing of an island or of a mountain, and when one is in Greece such a presencing leaps into view.
ποκείμενον is in fact the being as it lets itself be seen, and this means: that which is there before the eyes, as it brings itself forth from itself. Thus the mountain lies on land and the island in the sea.
Such is the Greek experience of beings.
For us, being as a whole—τὰ ὄντα—is only an empty word. For us, there is no longer that experience of beings in the Greek sense. On the contrary, as in Wittgenstein: “The real is what is the case”65 (which means: that which falls under a determination, lets itself be established, the determinable), actually an eerie statement.
For the Greeks, on the contrary, this experience of beings is so rich, so concrete and touches the Greeks to such an extent that there are significant synonyms (Aristotle, Metaphysics A): τὰ φαινóμενα, τὰ ἀληθέα. For this reason, it gets us nowhere to translate τὰ ὄντα literally as “the beings.” In so doing, there is no understanding of what is being for the Greeks. It is authentically: τὰ ἀληθέα, what is revealed in unconcealment, what postpones concealment for a time; it is τὰ φαινóμενα, what here shows itself from itself.
A supplementary question regarding the ὑποκείμενον is then posed. How is the experience of a being different when it is understood as ὑποκείμενον from when it is understood as φαινóμενον? Suppose we look upon a particular being, for example a mountain in the Lubéron.66 If it is taken as ὑποκείμενον, then the ὑπο names a κατά, more precisely the κατά of a λέγειν τι κατά τινóς. Of course, the Lubéron mountain does not actually disappear if it is spoken of as a ὑποκείμενον, but it no longer stands there as a phenomenon—no longer to be seen here as giving itself from itself. It no longer presences itself from itself. As ὑποκείμενον it is that about which we speak. Here it is crucial to make a fundamental distinction in regard to speaking, namely by distinguishing pure nomination (ὁνομάζειν) from the making of a proposition (λέγειν τι κατὰ τινóς.).
In simple nomination, I let what is present be what it is. Without a doubt naming includes the one who names—but what is proper to naming is precisely that the one who names intervenes only to step into the background before the being. The being then is pure phenomenon.
With a proposition, on the contrary, the one making the proposition takes part. He inserts himself into it—and he inserts himself into it as the one who ranges over the being in order to speak about it. As soon as that occurs, the being can now only be understood as ὑποκείμενον and the name only as a residue of the ἀπóφανσις.
Today, when all language is from the outset understood as proposition, it is very difficult for us to experience naming as pure nomination, outside of all κατάφασις and in such a way that it lets the being presence as pure phenomenon.
But what is “phenomenon” in the Greek sense? According to the modern way of speaking, “phenomenon” for the Greeks is precisely what cannot become a phenomenon for modernity; it is the thing itself, the thing in itself. Between Aristotle and Kant there lies an abyss. Here one must guard oneself against any retrospective interpretation. And thus the decisive question must be posed: in what way are τὰ ὄντα and τὰ φαινóμενα synonymous for the Greeks? Just how are what presences and what shows itself from itself (what appears) united? For Kant, such a unity is simply impossible.
For the Greeks, things appear.
For Kant, things appear to me.
In the time between them, it has come about that the being has become an ob-ject (obiectum, or better yet: res obstans). The expression “object” simply has no correlate in Greek.
For Hegel, Greek philosophy is interpreted as “merely objective,” which the Modern and Hegelian interpretations present as what Greek philosophy truly was. What Hegel thereby actually says is that the Greeks had not yet thought the subjective as mediation and hence as the core of objectivity. In this manner, while Hegel says something that in one way corresponds to Greek philosophy, he nonetheless obstructs access to the Greek meaning of being from the ground up. This is the case because the Hegelian interpretation tacitly suggests that Greek philosophy had not thought dialectical mediation, i.e., had not thought consciousness as the key to the becoming-phenomena of the phenomena. If he thinks in this way, and he does so think, then Hegel ultimately excludes himself from the Greek experience of a being as phenomenon.
He further says that the Greeks did experience the immediate, but for him that means something negative, a poverty of those who begin, for whom the experience of dialectical mediation is still lacking.
What has occurred between the Greeks and Hegel?
The thinking of Descartes. Hegel says that with him, thinking reaches “terra firma” for the first time. What Descartes undertakes is actually to determine ground by firmness—therefore to no longer let a ground be as it is from itself. In reality, Descartes surrenders the ground. He abandons it for the sake of firmness. What sort of firmness is this? Where does the firmness of the firmum come from for Descartes? He says it himself: from punctum firmum et inconcussum.67Inconcussum, i.e., unshakable, namely unshakable for knowledge, for consciousness, for perceptio (with Descartes knowledge becomes perceptio). The human is henceforth placed into his position as representer.
As we come back to the phenomena from here, the question arises: how are the φαινóμενα possible? Answer: by ἀλήθεια. The Greeks are those human beings who lived immediately in the openness of phenomena—through the expressly ek-static capacity of letting the phenomena speak to them (modern man, Cartesian man, se solum alloquendo, only talks to himself).
No one has ever again reached the heights of the Greek experience of a being as phenomenon. To gain an intimation of this, one need only consider the fact that there is no Greek word by which to say the being of the human in ἀλήθεια. There is nothing close. Not even in Greek poetry, where the being of the human is nonetheless brought to its pinnacle. Consequently, to name this being “existing” . . . the word has become so common, that it is open to every misunderstanding. If there is no Greek word for this ek-static existence, it is not so due to a lack, but rather an excess. The Greeks belong in their being to ἀλήθεια, in which the being unveils itself in its phenomenality. Accordingly this is their destiny: Mοῖρα.
Placing ourselves before the equivalence of meaning between a being and phenomenon, we ask: how does philosophy arise from the Greek residence in the midst of phenomena? To what extent is philosophy only able, and was only able, to emerge among the Greeks? From where does philosophy receive its first impetus, which sets it upon its way? Succinctly put, what is the beginning of philosophy? These questions lead back to a main question: In the relationship of Greek humanity to beings, in the sense of what is unconcealed, is there something that makes philosophy (as investigation into the being of beings) necessary?
However difficult it may be for us to accomplish anew what the Greeks did when they thought the being as an appearing outside of concealment, as coming-forth-out-of-concealment (in the sense of φύσις), we nevertheless ask: what occurs in the fact of arising-into-ἀλήθεια? What is at once co-named in the word φύειν?
It is the overabundance, the excess of what presences. Here one should recall the anecdote of Thales: he is that person so struck by the overabundance of the world of stars that he was compelled to direct his gaze towards the heavens alone. In the Greek climate,68 the human is so overwhelmed by the presencing of what presences, that he is compelled to the question concerning what presences as what presences. The Greeks name the relation to this thrust of presence θαυμάζειν.69
In extreme opposition to this, one can say that when the astronauts set foot on the moon, the moon as moon disappeared. It no longer rose or set. It is now only a calculable parameter for the technological enterprise of humans.
Clearly, what is decisive in all this is that the privation, the α of ἀλήθεια, corresponds to this excess. Privation is not negation. The more strongly it becomes what the word φύειν indicates, the more powerful is the source from which it springs, the concealment in unconcealment.
Consequently, it must always be emphasized that the dimension of the entirely excessive is that in which philosophy arises. Philosophy is indeed the answer of a humanity that has been struck by the excess of presence—an answer which is itself excessive, and one which leads to a more precise formulation: that philosophy as philosophy is no Greek way of ek-sisting, but rather a hyper-Greek way [eine übergriechische Weise des Ek-sistierens ist]. With this, we can understand the second part of the anecdote concerning Thales, who is so struck by what he sees that he no longer attends to the common things before his feet and falls into a well. To summarize: the Greeks are involved with ἀλήθεια in that they are usually occupied within ἀλήθεια. But it is with ἀλήθεια that the philosophers, those who are more Greek than the Greeks, are concerned, though admittedly not coming so far as to pose the question of ἀλήθεια (as such).
So the question is posed: in which form and to what extent is ἀλήθεια visible to the Greeks? Answer: in the form of τò αὑτó of νοεῖν and ε
ναι, as expressed in the poem of Parmenides.
This answer leads to the question concerning the Greek sense of knowing. In Greek, knowledge is named νοεῖν and ἰδεῖν—as both indicate being open for that which gives itself from itself. The correspondence of the Parmenidean τò αὑτó with the λóγος of Heraclitus is to be understood from this: both name that gathering in which being makes its address.
And so the answer must run: for the Greeks ἀλήθεια is visible as λóγος, and λóγος means, much more originally than “to speak”: to let presencing [Anwesen l...
