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DOI: 10.1177/1474885107070828 2007; 6; 31 European Journal of Political Theory

Franco Volpi In Whose Name?: Heidegger and Practical Philosophy

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In Whose Name? Heidegger and Practical Philosophy

Franco Volpi University of Padua

Translated by Niall Keane

abstract: Although Heideggers relation to political philosophy is, at the veryleast, problematic, many figures who have contributed significantly to the fieldattended his courses in the 1920s (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, HansJonas, Joachim Ritter, Gunther Anders and others). Heideggers work at that timewas marked by an extensive engagement with Aristotle, and above all with Aristotlespractical philosophy. This article approaches the question of Heidegger as a politicalthinker by returning to his reading of Aristotles practical philosophy in order toclarify the structural features of his thinking that inspired so many of his students todevelop a political philosophy clearly influenced by him. Heidegger reads theNicomachean Ethics as an ontology of human existence, centred on an interpretation ofhuman existence (Dasein) as prxis. This reading inspired a renaissance of practicalphilosophy in Germany and beyond. However, as Arendt has shown, Heideggersontologization closes prxis within a solipsistic horizon that deforms its political sense.It is this closure, which proves especially damaging when Heidegger begins tounderstand Dasein in relation to history and community, that many of his studentshave sought to reverse in their own work, thereby restoring a political dimension to aphilosophy profoundly influenced by Heidegger.

key words: Arendt, Aristotle, ethics, Heidegger, history, ontology, politics, practical philosophy

When Will You Write an Ethics?What is Heideggers relation to ethics and politics, i.e. to practical philosophy?How does his thought respond to the need for an orientation that is equal to the perplexity of the contemporary world? And in what way does it take up theproblem of action in the age of nihilism? These are awkward questions. Not onlydid Heidegger neither write an ethics nor a politics, he even declared that he didnot want to, criticizing all those who, appealing to values, endeavoured in vain tokindle some possible virtue and morality in the age of technology.

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article

Contact address: Franco Volpi, Universit degli studi di Padova, Dipartimento difilosofia, Universit degli studi di Padova, piazza Capitaniato, 3, 35139 Padova, Italy.

EJPTEuropean Journalof Political Theory

SAGE Publications Ltd,London, Thousand Oaks

and New Delhiissn 1474-8851, 6(1) 3151

[DOI: 10.1177/1474885107070828]


In the Letter on Humanism he recounts how, soon after the publication ofBeing and Time, a young friend inquired: When will you write an ethics? The disarming reply from Heidegger was: The desire for an ethics presses ever moreardently for fulfilment as the obvious no less than the hidden perplexity of humanbeings soars to immeasurable heights.1 Is there any need to underline that fromthe outset this affirmation arrests any proposal for an ethics or a politics? And that it eliminates every effort towards a practical philosophy as being unequal tothe problems of the contemporary age? No, there is not; and moreover it reflectsthe fact that Heidegger always privileged the problems of ontology over those ofpractical philosophy and focused on the sole question that he made his own: thequestion of Being.

Now in the face of this, it seems odd that precisely from out of Heideggers ownschool a number of thinkers were formed who made an essential contribution toethical and political thought in the 20th century. It is surprising, looking down thelist of participants at the seminars Heidegger held in Freiburg and Marburg in the1920s, to see that many of those present such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, HannahArendt, Joachim Ritter, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, Max Horkheimer and othersbesides were responsible for the widespread debate on the problem of prxis that took place in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s and which became known as therehabilitation of practical philosophy.2

How can this be explained? In the considerations that I will put forward rehearsing analyses developed more fully elsewhere3 I will try to outline thedeep-seated reasons for this surprising and apparently inexplicable connection. Itis to be found in the itinerary that Heidegger followed during the more than ten-year silence between his thesis (1915) and the publication of Being and Time(1927), and coincides with his first years of teaching at Freiburg (191923) and atMarburg (19238). In this period, Heidegger devoted himself to a voraciousappropriation of the practical philosophy of Aristotle, which served as a guidingthread for the resolution of problems arising from the theoreticism of modernphilosophy. This is an appropriation that took place not only where he refersexplicitly to Aristotle, but also where he departs from Aristotle in order to followthe course of his own inquiry. In short, it is an almost continuous engagementwith Aristotle that paves the way for Being and Time, and this magnum opus reflectsthe motivation behind this engagement to the point that one could say, albeitprovocatively, that it is a modern version of the Nicomachean Ethics a versionin which unexpected structural analogies between Aristotles practical philosophyand Heideggers project of an existential analysis come to light.

Now to understand not only the guiding thread that links Heidegger to therehabilitation of practical philosophy, but also the reasons why, at a certainmoment, this thread becomes invisible and the paths of Heideggers students veeroff in different directions to that of their teacher, one must bear in mind the particular perspective from which Heidegger appropriates the fundamental cate-gories of Aristotles practical philosophy. He transforms them into constitutive

European Journal of Political Theory 6(1)

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determinations for the Being of man, which is to say that he ontologizes themand nullifies their practical-moral force. When, later, Gadamer, Arendt, Ritter,Jonas and the other neo-Aristotelians undertook the rehabilitation of practicalphilosophy, on the one hand, they brought to fruition the teaching of the youngHeidegger who had shown them the importance and relevance of practical reasonin Aristotle; on the other hand, they did not follow him in this ontologizationand each, in his or her own way, held firm to this or that practical category inAristotle: Gadamer rehabilitating phrnesis, Hannah Arendt drawing attention tothe concepts of prxis and vita activa, Joachim Ritter underlining the fundamentalnature of ethos and Hans Jonas returning to the Aristotelian definition of agathon.

Given that I cannot examine all of these texts here, I shall just outline a few considerations that may help us to identify some of the constitutive structures ofHeideggers philosophy. I shall then try to shed some light on analogies that makeit possible to place these structures alongside corresponding intuitions inAristotles practical philosophy.

The New Textual SourcesToday new textual sources on this hypothesis can be developed, constituted by theuniversity courses that Heidegger held every semester from 1919. Almost all ofthese have now been published in Heideggers Gesamtausgabe and many have alsobeen translated into English. For an understanding of Heideggers discovery ofAristotle as an alternative to neo-Kantianism and Husserlian phenomenology, weneed to look above all to the courses that Heidegger held in his first period ofteaching in Freiburg (191923), when he developed the phenomenological inter-pretation of Aristotle that was to become decisive for him. In particular, we needto look at the courses of the winter semester of 19212, PhenomenologicalInterpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, and the summersemester of 1923, Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity.4 In addition, we also knowthat, as Heidegger was bringing the 19212 course to a close and was preparinganother for the following semester, dedicated entirely to ontology and logic inAristotle, Husserl, following an invitation from Paul Natorp and Georg Misch,put his young student forward for the chairs in philosophy that were soon tobecome free in Marburg and Gttingen. Husserl urged Heidegger to publishsomething quickly. In the autumn of 1922 Heidegger hurriedly prepared a synthesis of his own interpretation of Aristotle and, via Husserl, sent it to bothNatorp and Misch. Natorp also received whole parts of Heideggers course fromthe summer semester of 1922. In Gttingen, the chair was given to MoritzGeiger, but Heideggers interpretation of Aristotle impressed Natorp and his colleagues, who offered him the chair at Marburg in preference to RichardKroner and Heinz Heimsoeth. The text itself was then to have been published inthe Jahrbuch fr Philosophie und phnomenologische Forschung, managed by Husserl.In reality, it remained in the dark and seemed to have been completely lost,

Volpi: In Whose Name?

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since the only remaining copy, which had come to be in the hands of Gadamer,went missing in the bombing of Leipzig. A few years ago, the version sent toMisch was rediscovered amongst some old papers and was published on the occa-sion of the centenary of Heideggers birth, in 1989, with a brief introduction byGadamer.5 The manuscript of the 1922 course, containing the whole of theAristotle interpretation, has now also been found and published as volume 62 ofthe Gesamtausgabe (2005).

Of particular importance for the thesis developed in this article is the coursethat Heidegger held in the summer semester of 1924 on Book 2 of AristotlesRhetoric, recently published as Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie.6 Thenthere is the course from the winter semester of 1924 on Platos Sophist, which con-tains a detailed interpretation of Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics.7 Also importantare the courses Einfhrung in die Phnomenologische Forschung (19234);8 Logik: DieFrage nach dem Wahrheit (19256);9 Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie(1926),10 in which Heidegger deals with the entire history of Ancient Greek phi-losophy, beginning with Thales and ending with a full monograph on Aristotle;and finally Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie (1975).11

Although I cannot deal with all these texts in full here, I shall draw on them toset out certain structural features of Heideggers discourse that reveal its proxim-ity to elements in Aristotelian practical philosophy.

The Themes of the Engagement with AristotleIt is necessary, first of all, to define the basic outlines of the thematic horizon ofthe engagement with Aristotle in the period leading up to Being and Time. It ischaracterized by three fundamental problems that stand at the centre of the work,namely:

1) the problem of truth, understood in an ontological sense as the opening anddisclosure of meaning, not understood in terms of the validity of judgement;

2) the problem of the ontological constitution of human life, understood asDasein;

3) the problem of temporality, understood in an originary or non-naturalisticsense, as the constitution of Dasein in its potentiality-for-Being (Seinknnen).

The unitary horizon within which these problems are addressed is defined by thequestion of Being, which is still treated here in the sense of the question of theBeing of beings; that is, of the fundamental ways of being in which a being is (andhere Heidegger follows the guiding thread of the problem of the manifold senseof Being and of the search for its unitary meaning, prompted by a reading of FranzBrentanos dissertation On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle).

Of these three problems (truth, Dasein and temporality), I will, on this occasion,consider only the second problem for the comparison that I intend to develop:that of the ontological constitution of human life, the way of being proper to


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Dasein. The question to be addressed is: how does Heidegger come to treat thisproblem?

My hypothesis is that the line of philosophical inquiry of the young Heideggerin the 1920s was determined by the search for a unitary sense that could supportthe plurivocity of beings. To this end, he examines, one after another, the fourfundamental senses in which a being can be, to ascertain the one fundamentalsense to which the others are related. Dissatisfied with the ousiological solutionproposed by Brentano, as well as the traditional solution of the analogia entis, in the1920s Heidegger works carefully through the sense of Being as true to see whetherit could be the fundamental sense that supports and structures the others. In thesame way, he goes on to examine, in turn, the meaning of Being according topotentiality and actuality, as we can see from the course of the summer semester of1933 (Aristotle, Metaphysics Q 13 On the Essence and Actuality of Force).12

It is now a matter of showing how Heidegger following the guiding thread ofthe problem of the manifold signification of being comes to discover and renewAristotles practical philosophy.

He comes to it via an examination of the meaning of Being as true, and, in par-ticular, by way of an interpretation of Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics (whichreceived a partial exposition in the course of the winter semester of 19245). Thisinterpretation takes its point of departure from an engagement with Husserl inthe course of which Heidegger appropriates and transforms the phenomenologi-cal viewpoint in both its method and its problems. In fact, in the context of theanalysis of beings as true, which Heidegger undertakes in the 1920s, he aims toprovide a philosophically rigorous determination of the original features ofhuman life, Dasein, with particular reference to its being disclosive. Hence, in theattempt to overcome the Husserlian comprehension of human life in terms ofsubjectivity, he takes up and reinterprets the Aristotelian determination of psychas alethuein. The programme of an original theoretical science, hermeneutic offacticity or existential analytic, which is accomplished in Being and Time, springsfrom the marriage of the phenomenological access to the problem and theAristotelian elements deployed.

Referring to this phenomenological appropriation of Aristotle, carried out withHusserl, but also against him, at the beginning of the summer of 1923 in a retro-spective autobiography on the path followed thus far, the young Heideggerwrites: Companions in my search were the young Luther and the paragonAristotle, whom Luther hated. Impulses were given by Kierkegaard, and Husserlopened my eyes.13 But how did Heidegger come to assign prxis a fundamentalrole?


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The Nicomachean Ethics as an Ontology of HumanExistenceThere is evidence to suggest that what Heidegger was looking for in theNicomachean Ethics and in the Aristotelian determination of prxis and practicalphilosophy was a way of responding to problems raised by phenomenology, butwhich the Husserlian conception of transcendental subjectivity, defined primarilyon the basis of cognitive acts of a theoretical nature, could not address and leftunresolved.14

Through a study of Aristotle, and in particular the Nicomachean Ethics,Heidegger came to the conviction that theora represents but one of the possiblemodalities by means of which man approaches things and discovers them. Beyondand prior to theora there lies the uncovering attitude of prxis and piesis, in whichman relates to beings and brings their characters to light. Interpreting Book 6 ofthe Nicomachean Ethics within the thematic horizon of phenomenology, but goingbeyond Husserls overly theoretical understanding of subjectivity, Heidegger dis-covered in Aristotle a phenomenology of human existence richer and moreoriginal than that developed by Husserl. The Aristotelian one in fact deals withthe three fundamental uncovering movements of life: piesis, prxis, theora, andthe three corresponding dispositions: tchne, phrnesis and sopha.

In this context one can highlight significant correspondences regarding theproblems, the concepts and even in the terminology of Being and Time and theNicomachean Ethics, and see how Heidegger in fact restores, transforms and reactivates the substantial sense of certain Aristotelian ideas. The first obvious correspondence is the one among the three fundamental ways of being, distin-guished by Heidegger during the 1920s and in Being and Time, i.e. Dasein,Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit, with the three Aristotelian determinations ofprxis, piesis and theora.

1) Theora is an uncovering attitude which has a descriptive, verifying andobservatory purpose, aiming at a pure and simple contemplation of beings,therefore grasping them in their truth, i.e. in their manifestness. The corre-sponding type of knowing is sopha. According to Heidegger, when humanexistence assumes this uncovering attitude, beings appear in a manner which isdefined as Vorhandenheit, present-at-hand, i.e. simply being present.

2) Piesis is an uncovering attitude of the productive and manipulating kind, anattitude which is assumed with respect to being when one pursues the aim ofthe production of works; tchne is the species of knowing which guides ittowards its outcome. When one is in this disposition, Being is introduced inthe modality which Heidegger terms Zuhandenheit, in the sense of being-available or being-usable.

3) Prxis is an uncovering attitude put forward strictly in the activities which havetheir aim not outside of themselves in a work, like piesis, but rather in them-


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selves; phrnesis, prudentia or practical wisdom, is a type of knowledge thatguides prxis to its outcome. The hypothesis that one could put forward is that,as human life in its entirety has for Aristotle the character of prxis (Politics 1.4. 12547), for Heidegger, too, prxis is a determining attitude that character-izes the fundamental structure of Dasein.

It is obvious that Heideggers aim is not merely to restore the Aristotelian deter-mination of prxis, piesis and theora exactly as they were conceived by Aristotle.He exploits them freely, reformulating their meaning within his project of ananalysis of Dasein and thus deeply modifying the structure, the character and articulation of such determinations. The most obvious transformation is that heassigns them an ontological character while simultaneously depriving them of the value of human action. Ultimately, for Heidegger, prxis, piesis and theora areneither dispositions nor particular kinds of action, but rather modalities of Beinginherent in the structure of Dasein; they constitute the conditions of possibility ofthe particular theoretical, practical and productive comportments. Another sig-nificant transformation is the shift that takes place in the hierarchy of the threedispositions. It is no longer theora which is considered as the supreme determi-nation but, instead, prxis. It becomes the modality of Being constitutive ofDasein, the ontological root of Dasein from which the possibility of a particulartheoretical, practical and productive comportment depends. With this shift, eventhe relation to the other determinations changes: Zuhandenheit (in which piesis isrestored and ontologized) and Vorhandenheit (which corresponds to theora) sub-sist in relation to the Being of Dasein (which fundamentally has the character ofprxis). In fact, Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit indicate the ways of being inwhich a being respectively can be found according to the disposition of being-there, which is originary praxis, a disposition which can be observational andcontemplative, or productive and manipulative. Piesis and theora are two modal-ities of the unitary disposition of Dasein that Heidegger calls concern (Besorgen).In this way, leading piesis and theora back to a more original disposition thatgrounds them both, i.e. Besorgen, Heidegger achieves two results:

1) He demonstrates the connection between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit,between piesis and theora, and, moreover, between the latter and Dasein, whichis originary prxis.

2) Furthermore, against the traditional conception, he suggests that theora is notthe primary disposition of human life, but is derived from a modification of theproductive disposition (precisely following the phenomena of Aufflligkeit,Aufdringlichkeit and Aufsssigkeit analysed in Being and Time).15

Ontologization, the hierarchical movement and the unitary structuring are there-fore the determining transformations to which Heidegger subjects the Aristoteliandetermination of prxis, piesis and theora. But why these transformations?

The main reason is, according to Heidegger, that with such determinations


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Aristotle characterizes the fundamental uncovering attitudes of human existence,the ways in which the soul is in truth, and supplies, therefore, the first phenome-nological analysis of existence. However, Aristotle still failed to explicitly addressthe issue of their unitary connection, the problem of the ontological unity inwhich they have their root and which is ultimately revealed to be originary temporality. As we know, Heidegger charges such an omission to the fact thatAristotle remained tied to a naturalistic understanding of time, which preventedhim from articulating his understanding of Being in relation to the completeunfolding of the ecstases of time, i.e. past, present and future. Aristotle, tied tothe metaphysics of presence, was unable to grasp temporality as the unitary onto-logical root of human existence.

Dasein as the Ontologization of PrxisWhy then, despite this criticism, should we interpret Dasein as a modern ontolo-gized version of Aristotelian prxis? The reason for doing so is that Heideggersdetermination of the Being of existence, Dasein, is clearly attained within a prac-tical horizon obtained by exploiting the characteristics that Aristotle attributes toprxis and transforming them into ontological features. In the 1920s, Heideggerhimself suggests an equation of Dasein with prxis and treats Aristotles epistmepraktik as an ontology of human life.16

Therefore, we should first of all interpret, in an eminently practical sense, thecharacterization of existence as having-to-be (Zu-sein), which Heidegger intro-duces in 4 and 9 of Being and Time. With such a characterization, whichindicates the modality in which existence refers to itself, Heidegger wants to high-light the fact that existence relates to its Being, not merely in an attitude of observing and ascertaining through a self-involved manner, a theoretical-reflective introspection, an inspectio sui. Moreover, Dasein relates to itself througha practical-moral attitude in which its own Being matters and is decided upon.Willingly, or not, existence must support the weight of such a decision. Existencedoes not relate to its own Being with the aim of neutrally observing its ownessence and personal characteristics, in order to establish its nature as rationalanimal, but rather with the aim of deciding what to do with its own Being, withthe aim of choosing, among a multiplicity of possibilities, which to take on andrealize as its own. In such a sense, it could be said that existence must support theunbearable lightness of its Being.

Certainly, such a practical characteristic of the ontological structure of Daseinas having-to-be is maintained by Heidegger only up to here. Later, when Daseinis no longer understood on the basis of itself, as in Being and Time, but startingfrom the openness of Being within which it always already finds itself grounded,he will systematically cancel every trace of this practical connotation and will no longer determine the open character of Dasein as a having-to-be, but rather asex-istence which stands-out into the openness of Being. However, the insistence


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with which Heidegger retracts the practical connotation of Dasein allows us toconjecture that we may see in this the true Heideggerian understanding of themodality of Being of human existence in the epoch of Being and Time.

Care as the Root of the Practical Structure of ExistenceOnly by interpreting the self-reference of Dasein to its own Being in a practical-moral sense is it possible to grasp the other connotations of Dasein in theirstructural unity. It is understandable, for example, why Heidegger characterizesthe open character of Dasein, that is, its Erschlossenheit and the unity of determi-nations that define it, by means of a concept which is derived from the field ofpractical philosophy such as care (Sorge). Sorge, the term with which Heideggerreformulates in a practical sense, rather than a theoretical one, what Husserlunderstood by the term intentionality, is the ontologized resignification of thathuman trait which is a reaching towards, not merely perceptive and observativebut rather practical and appetitive, and which Aristotle traced back to rexis, theappetite.

The proof? Well, it would be enough to bring together the steps of theAristotelian corpus in which the term rexis appears, or the corresponding verborgomai, to see how Heidegger translates them, with amazing regularity, usingthe term Sorge. The most significant passage lies in the opening of the Metaphysics,in which the celebrated affirmation All men by nature desire to know (pntesnthropoi to eidnai orgontai physei) which Heidegger translates as: The care[Sorge] for seeing is essential to mans Being [Im Sein des Menschen liegt wesenhaftdie Sorge des Sehens].17 It must be emphasized here that not only does he translateorgontai with Sorge, but he also ontologizes pntes nthropoi as Im Sein desMenschen.

Within the same practical horizon, one can better understand why Heideggercharacterizes Besorgen, concern, as the modality of Being in which Dasein isopened and related to things, in which the manipulating and productive attitudeof piesis is rooted, as well as the observing and verifying attitude of theora, andthe modality of Being in which existence relates to others as Frsorge. It is betterunderstood in this way since these determinations have their unitary root in thepractical character of Sorge.

It is unnecessary here to follow all the paths which Heidegger took with the aimof tracing the unitary foundation which bears the practical structure of Daseinunderstood as having-to-be. As is well known, he characterizes this foundation bythe fact that Dasein is not realized in the stability of Being and pure act, but is, inits finitude, a potentiality-for-being (Seinknnen) which projects ahead of itself.Dasein is a being, that, as long as it is, is not yet. As such, it is unavoidably forcedoutside of itself and away from the stability of presence and exposed to the instability of the temporal ecstasis of the future in which it projects and unfolds itspossibilities. Therefore, potentiality-for-being is a modality essentially character-


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ized by temporal and ontological ecstasis, that is, from an exposure to becomingwhich characterizes Dasein as originally open and free for finitude. And since thisfreedom is not something that Dasein chooses to have, but is, instead, a constituentpart of its ontological structure, consequently Dasein perceives it as somethingwhich it cannot rid itself of and therefore feels it like a weight: the weight of theunbearable lightness of its Being, a weight which is revealed in the fundamentallyontological feeling of anxiety.

The Four Theses that Heidegger ExtractsFrom the ontologization of prxis Heidegger draws the following fundamentalconsequences for an understanding of Dasein:

1) Contrary to the predominant metaphysics of presence, priority is given to thefuture. Because Dasein relates to its Being through a practical relation, choos-ing its Being, this Being which is time and again at stake is always a futuralBeing. It is impossible not to see in this a connection with Aristotles teachingthat the practical attitudes, deliberation (boleusis) and decision (prohiresis),always concern the future.18

2) The Being to which Dasein relates in practical self-reference is always my ownBeing, and it is this that Heidegger wants to express with the term Jemeinigkeit(mineness), a being-always-mine. It is, in fact, always regarding my own Being,not that of others, that I decide while projecting existence. This too has a parallel in Aristotle: Jemeinigkeit is a reformulation, in ontological terms, of thecharacteristics of the practical knowledge of phrnesis, which Aristotle definesas a haut eidnai, a knowledge regarding oneself, that is, concerning t hautagath ki symphronta, the things that are good and useful for everyone.19

3) In consideration of all these elements Heidegger establishes a radical differ-ence between the ontological constitution of Dasein and that which is other toDasein, basing it upon the conviction that only Dasein is a having-to-be, i.e.possessing a practical character. On this distinction he bases the ontical andontological primacy of Dasein and he criticizes the insufficient radicality of the metaphysical demarcation between man and nature, subject and object,consciousness and world, since they are rooted not in an authentic grasp of the practical-existential structure of human life, but rather in objectifying categories that thematize it, privileging the theoretical-descriptive attitude.

The practical determination of the Being of Dasein implies abandoning the traditional theory of self-consciousness conceived as a verifying and reflexiveknowledge in relation to the self, achieved by means of self-scrutiny. The identityof Dasein is rather constructed through a practical modality, in the sense illus-trated, according to which Dasein refers to its own Being, assuming its weight andresponsibility. This self-reference of the practical-decisional type, another impor-tant thesis of Heideggers, is not only actualized at the level of higher intellective


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acts, but is also and indeed primarily a feature of actions traditionally con-sidered inferior, e.g. the passions, the conditions of the soul, the Stimmungen. Ittakes place within the emotional structure of human life in its deepest layers. Inthis way, Heidegger takes a twofold distance from the metaphysical tradition, inwhich the specificity of human life was traced back to the objectifying and reify-ing categories of pure observation, and by and large gave too much emphasis tothe theoretical, to presence and consciousness, privileging the higher cognitiveand rational acts.

The Practical Philosophy of Aristotle as a GuidingThread in the Analysis of ExistenceIt is clear that Heideggers analytical reading of Dasein according to thisAristotelian pattern can give rise to doubts and perplexity. Ultimately, it is tooeasy to object that, for example, in the presentation of his programme Heideggeralso distances himself from Aristotle and explicitly criticizes the definition of manas a living being endowed with lgos, and, hence, also the Aristotelian prioritiza-tion of predicative speech (lgos apophantiks). To this one could also reply thatHeidegger declared his debt to Aristotle on many other occasions, and even so inBeing and Time where he scrupulously cancels out any trace of its productiveassimilation.20 However, the best way to dispel such doubts and perplexity is toshow concretely which Aristotelian determinations of practical philosophyHeidegger restores.

First of all he restores, although in different terms, the general problem of practical philosophy. In fact, within the horizon of the consideration effected byepistme praktik, a term that, and this is correct to emphasize, Heidegger translatesas Ontologie des menschlichen Lebens, human life in its entirety is considered as prx-is, not piesis, and prxis is conceived as the specific movedness of human life, i.e.knesis to bou. Now, such movement is not simply directed towards the con-servation of life, living pure and simple (zn), but, as a project of life, it is openedand unfolded, once the conservation of life is guaranteed, through the problem ofhow to live, that is, the problem of the choice of the form of life preferable formankind. In as much as it is prxis, human life is opened to the problem of livingwell (u zn) and of the means to attain such a goal. This means that man as a politi-cal animal endowed with lgos should assume the task of deliberation (boleusis), ofchoosing and deciding (prohiresis) the way and form of its life, orienting itselftowards that which it thinks better and preferable. As we know, it is the wise andprudent man (phrnimos) who accomplishes good deliberation (euboula), goodchoice and good decision, arriving therefore at acting well (eupraxa) and livingwell (u zn), and thus being happy (eudaimona).

This basic insight of Aristotles is appropriated by Heidegger by means of anontologization that radicalizes and intensifies its fundamental meaning. ForHeidegger, too, Dasein is a type of being whose Being is an issue for it, and pre-


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cisely in the practical-existential sense that it must decide what to make of itself,must establish in which form and modality to project itself and realize its true self,even in the limit situation in which such a decision takes the form of non-decision.Existence is a being that must decide about its own Being or, to put it as Aristotledid, about t haut agath ki symphronta. And as in Aristotle, it is by pursuingphrnesis that one succeeds in those decisions and actions of life, so in HeideggerDasein realizes itself authentically (phrnimos) only when listening to the call ofconscience, it recognizes this having-to-choose as its own specific task (rgon), or,better, as its ownmost being, supporting its weight and not retreating towards thehelp which the impersonal and improper man offers at all times.

During the 1920s Heidegger aimed to define the fundamental movedness(Grundbewegtheit) of human life in the practical decisional self-referentiality thatcharacterizes it. So, in the Aristotelian thesis that prxis is knesis to bou, the specific movedness of human life, Heidegger sees a substantial confirmation of the direction taken by his own search in aiming to grasp Dasein at the original levelof its facticity.21 There is thus a fruitful synergy here between the need for a speculative inquiry based on the index of concepts and problems provided by theAristotelian corpus, and a reading of Aristotle given new life by a sensitivity forwhat is philosophically relevant.

The Transformation of the ProblemIt is not possible here to go to the heart of the Aristotelian understanding of prxis, nor is it possible to follow closely the interpretation that Heidegger pro-poses of Aristotles practical philosophy. Yet it is possible to indicate how hederives further determinations for his own analysis of Dasein by stating them in astrictly ontological sense.

In fact, if the fundamental insights of Aristotles practical philosophy representan essential aid against the theoretical unilateralism of metaphysics, especiallymodern metaphysics, they should then be freed from the metaphysical-anthropo-logical residuum which they carry within themselves. The Aristotelian under-standing of prxis, not sufficiently ontologized, is situated within the framework ofa presupposed conception of man as rational animal to which it remains bound.Instead, for Heidegger, the validity of every metaphysical and anthropological reference having vanished, there are no more possible points of reference to whichthe practical understanding of human life can be oriented. Every substantial support that is valid for the metaphysical tradition is considered a derivative anddefective element with respect to original acting, the prxis that constitutes theBeing of Dasein. The latter must only be understood in reference to itself, outsideof every prefiguration and predetermination. In the absence of a frame of refer-ence, prxis is constituted from within itself. It is constituted in such a way that itbecomes an original ontological determination, self-teleological, independent andself-oriented: a ho hneka, Worumwillen.


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A fundamental difference comes to light here. For Aristotle, practical sciencerepresents a particular consideration of human life, which thematizes life in asmuch as it is an action that aims at the realization of a to do (praktn). But this isjust one possible way, amongst others, of considering it, for example, the under-standing of physics, biology or psychology. In the successive tradition, however,it has not had a privileged understanding; indeed, due to its inferior scientific precision (akrbeia), practical philosophy has been thought of as a minor philo-sophy. In any case, it does not exhaust the understanding of the human life.

For Heidegger, instead, these practical determinations do not exist alongsideother possible determinations, but entirely occupy understanding and the consti-tution of existence. This implies that their content, being constitutive of Dasein,is not ultimately something which can be freely chosen, to have or not to have, butindicates a determination to which it is indissolubly bound and to which it cannotescape. Decision, for example, or prxis itself, are no longer conceived as possibil-ities that existence can put into action at will, but become ontological predicatesof its Being, characterizing it independently of its will and its free choice.

This involves a further shift in the characterization of prxis. Conceived as apossibility that may or may not be grasped, it possesses a positive value, it is a pos-sible way to project and to realize the Being of man. If, on the other hand, it isunderstood as the ontological structure of Dasein, it assumes the character ofinevitability, becoming something that is impossible to do without. In this con-ception, prxis is present not only in the execution of certain actions, but is alwaysalready given with existence itself, insofar as it constitutes its nature and precedesevery particular action. It is this character of inevitability, deriving from theontologization of prxis as the structure of existence that confers upon its Beingthe character of weight, which gives the impression that its lightness is unbear-able.

The ontologization of prxis finally provokes another transformation: it pro-duces, so to speak, the dissolution of its specific weight as acting and the loss of the ethico-political character that Aristotle gave to prxis, specifically therootedness in a koinona. Heideggers ontologization closes prxis within a solip-sistic horizon that deforms its practico-political configuration. It was HannahArendt, and I can do no more than note this in passing here, who decisively criti-cized this reductive aspect of Heideggers rehabilitation of prxis, and reversed, inher interpretation of vita activa, the direction of the Heideggerian recovery. Whatin Heidegger is marked by inauthenticity, i.e. the public dimension, becomes forher the authentic dimension par excellence. Authentic prxis is, for her, public andpolitical action.22

To sum up, Heideggers ontologization of prxis provokes a series of radicaltransformations which should be neither forgotten nor removed. But the existingcorrespondences emerge and impose themselves in spite of all such changes.Examining how the Heideggerian configuration of the open structure of existencerestores and reformulates certain decisive moments of the Aristotelian under-


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standing of the practico-moral character of human life, one can establish an entireinventory of correspondences with Aristotle:

1) It can be shown how the three fundamental existentials which define theontological constitution of existence, i.e. understanding (Verstehen), attune-ment (Befindlichkeit) and discourse (Rede), restore the fundamental sense ofthe determination of the principle of man as appetitive intellect (nos orek-tiks) or intellectual appetite (orxis dianoetik) which Aristotle puts forward inBook 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics.23

2) In this context, conscience (Gewissen) is the Heideggerian version of Aris-totelian phrnesis, just as Gadamer recalled.24

3) Decision and resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) represent an ontologization of proharesis, with the difference that the latter is a determined moment of action,while Entschlossenheit is a character of the Being of Dasein.25

4) The term Jemeinigkeit, as has been pointed out, is the ontologization of thedetermination by means of which Aristotle indicates the fact that phrnesis is aknowledge concerning oneself (t haut eidnai).26

5) The connotation of existence as Worumwillen is the ontologization of the self-teleology of prxis: since the distinctive feature of the latter lies in the fact thatit is not oriented towards anything else (hnek tinos), like piesis, but towardsitself, having its own end within itself (ho ones hneka), and since existence iseminently prxis ontologized, it must possess, in a lofty manner, the characterof self-teleology, it must be a Worumwillen, a for-the-sake-of-which. This isexactly the character that Heidegger attributes to it by means of this charac-terization.27

Being or Acting?Is it still possible to harbour doubts over the traces that Heideggers fervent assimilation of Aristotle left in the path of his philosophical development? Surelynot. Indeed, the correspondence could be pushed even further, to the point ofestablishing an analogy between the relation that Aristotle sets up between phronetic knowledge and practical science and the relation in Heidegger betweenauthentic life and the possibility of an understanding of Being such as that realized in the philosophical analysis of Dasein. We know that for Aristotle practical science presupposed phronetic knowledge and we also know that it is dis-tinguished from the pure knowledge of theory by its consequences for prxis. Andin Heidegger, too, something similar happens: philosophy, insofar as it representsa higher form of existence, presupposes the choice of an authentic life. At the sametime, the theoretical rewards of this higher form of life are not separate from thislife itself, but reflect back upon it and promote its accomplishment.

Of course, one cannot neglect the fact that in taking up the intuitions ofAristotles practical philosophy, Heidegger subjects them to a transformation that


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I have called ontologization. And it is clear that this is how he intends to graspwhat eluded Aristotle; namely, the unity of the essential features of human life, theontological foundation of Dasein, originary temporality (Zeitlichkeit). This is why,once the ontologization has been completed, Heidegger distances himself fromAristotle: he, Aristotle, could not grasp originary temporality as the unitary onto-logical foundation of all the determinations of human life, which were thereforeapprehended episodically according to the chronological and not the kairologicalunderstanding of time. Even the fact that Aristotle explicitly raises the well-known aporia of the relation between the soul and time (Physics 4. 14. 223a219),of which Heidegger himself provides a masterly interpretation, is not enough toconvince Heidegger to exclude Aristotle completely from the horizon of the nat-uralistic understanding of time.28

It should be clear by now why Heidegger insisted on the ontologization of theproblem, in spite of the fact that he could see how to restore and renew the most profound meaning of certain ideas in Aristotles practical philosophy. And one can understand why, as he continued along the path he had chosen, heleft the stages he passed along the way behind him and did not even bother to publish the texts that bear witness to the extraordinary period of his engagementwith Aristotle. Yet, one can also understand why his students subsequently mademuch of what they had learnt regarding the relevance of Aristotles practical philosophy.

In this way, Gadamer proposed a rehabilitation of phrnesis. In a brilliantly con-ceived chapter in Truth and Method (1960), he defends the hermeneutic actualityof Aristotles ethics, referring in particular to the practico-moral understandingthat Aristotle defines as phrnesis.29 Although he initially intended solely to usesuch understanding as a model for the solution of the hermeneutic problem of application, his appeal to phrnesis has had in fact a much broader reception,giving a crucial stimulus to the renewal of interest in Aristotles practical philo-sophy. Indeed, such an appeal has been a focal point for much of the revival ofAristotles ethics and politics, not only in philosophy, but also in other fields,which have been called neo-Aristotelianism. Rereading that chapter of Truth andMethod in the light of what has been said about the teaching of the youngHeidegger, it is almost tangible how Gadamers rediscovery depends on the interpretation of Aristotle given by Heidegger at Freiburg and Marburg. Thisdependency is clearer still, if one looks at an earlier elaboration of the ideas set outin this same chapter of Truth and Method, which is contained in the essay PracticalKnowledge written in 1930, but published only in 1986, in his Gesammelte Werke(Vol 5). Even the most explicit and direct appeal to the paradigmatic role ofAristotles practical philosophy that Gadamer made in later writings such asHermeneutics as Practical Philosophy (1972) or The Ideal of Practical Philosophy (1980) look quite different in the light of the considerations presented here.

Hannah Arendt put forward a rehabilitation of prxis in Vita Activa (1958,1960). Motivated by an urge to understand the pernicious nature of the modern


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world of work and technology, she drew the attention of contemporary thoughtto the Aristotelian determination of prxis and its fundamental significance for agenuine understanding of the political, for an analysis of the various forms ofhuman plurality, and for a critique of the political institutions corresponding tothem. As she herself acknowledged, Arendts programme, too, depends on theteaching of the young Heidegger. As amazing as it may seem, especially in view ofthe political obtuseness he demonstrated in 1933, it was Heidegger who firstshowed that the original character of human life is acting, prxis understood inthe Aristotelian sense of action distinct from production or theory. It isHeidegger who showed Arendt how the privilege accorded by the tradition to theory and the corresponding primacy of presence had made prxis that is, man a present object to observe and describe, a thing among things. PuttingHeideggers teaching to use, Arendt aimed to deconstruct the theoreticism oftraditional political thought that imprisoned the open character of action withinobjectifying and reifying frameworks and categories that are quite foreign to it.

Her conviction, inspired by Heidegger, is that western political thought closesoff the character of possibility of political action and brings it back down to thehorizon of mere production. Such a tendency has been taken to an extreme in themodern world. Here, every human activity is reduced to work; the political, assuch, is no more than politics, that is, a mechanism for the conservation andadministration of power. The authentic and original characteristics of the politi-cal are totally eclipsed. To oppose this tendency, she sets out to re-evaluate thefeatures of political action discredited by the tradition: its plurality and unpre-dictability, its unrepeatability and irreversibility, its originality in the twofoldsense of being new and a new beginning, in a word, its freedom. It is an actingwithout ends because it knows only a disinterested finality: glory (recognizedsince Homer), freedom (praised from Athens to the classical period), justice andequality, understood as expressions of the original dignity of all human beings.Heidegger rediscovered prxis, but he closed it off within the horizon of a rigidsolipsism of decision, where existence stands naked before its destiny. Arendttakes up this intuition, but turns it around into a celebration of the intersubjec-tive, plural and public nature that is the political nature of acting.

Joachim Ritter, himself a student of Heideggers for a certain time, proposed arehabilitation of ethos in a series of studies collected in Metaphysik und Politik andthrough the works of his own students (Gnther Bien, Willi Oelmller, RobertSpaemann and others).30 Bringing together the Aristotelian idea of practicalknowledge and the Hegelian conception of Sittlichkeit concrete ethical life asopposed to the abstract universality of Moralitt he underlined the necessaryinterpenetration of practical reason with the concrete context of its actualizationand, against the current of ethical intellectualism and contemporary politicalutopianism, gave priority in the evaluation of acting to the accomplishment of aform of life, that is, to a concrete ethos, over and above the observation of univer-sal but abstract principles.


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Hans Jonas, too, in his project of an ethics for the age of technology at leastin the way that the foundational part of his Imperative of Responsibility returns tothe Aristotelian concept of the good (agathon) as distinct from the modern senseof value demonstrates a knowledge of the Nicomachean Ethics that quite plainlydepends on the teaching of the young Heidegger.31

If it is clear that all these initiatives can be reconsidered in the light of the youngHeideggers rehabilitation of Aristotles practical philosophy, it is also true thatthe way Heideggers students used his teaching leads in a different direction tothat which he originally intended and, even more so, in relation to his laterthought. After the turn, further radicalizing the ontologization of the problem ofacting set out in the 1920s, Heidegger focused his attention increasingly on thequestion of Being as event.

The impossibility of writing an ethics, or a politics, was in this period under-lined in the clearest of terms. Not because ethics or politics are not important, butbecause they remain subordinate or derivative with respect to the thinking ofBeing. The thinking of Being, in fact, recognizes that the present epoch is deter-mined by the domination of technology, under which everything is treated as aproduct of human work, an artefact, and thus the whole of Being is seen accord-ing to a single modality of Being, and Being itself, in the inexhaustible multiplicityof its significations, is forgotten. Technology, as the destiny of the present epoch,leaves no room for anything but a technical and manipulative form of comport-ment: thus, no room for theory, for authentic prxis, for ethics or for politics.

While it may be true that the title of the lecture Building Dwelling Thinkingis an implicit allusion to the three comportments piesis, prxis and theora,Heideggers response, according to which the homelessness of modern manderives from the absence of an adequate dwelling, is loud and clear: imprisoned inthe iron cage of technology, man is without ethico-political prxis and has not yetdeveloped an anthropological comportment to match the challenges of techno-science.32 With respect to the extreme realities produced by modern technology,in the advancing desert of nihilism, every recourse to ethics and to politicsremains second best. In the presence of the almost geological force of the epochaldisplacements attributable to technology, virtue and morality take on the beautyof rare fossils.

One does not have to be Heideggerian to agree with his assertion that: it is notthat the world is becoming entirely technical which is really uncanny. Far moreuncanny is our being unprepared for this transformation.33 To which one can addanother crucial assertion:

. . . the global movement of modern technology is a force whose scope in determininghistory can scarcely be overestimated. A decisive question for me today is: how can apolitical system accommodate itself to the technlogical age, and which political systemwould this be.34

According to Heidegger, the condition of the thinking of Being becomes, in itself,


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an indication of comportment, alternative to ethics and traditional politics, inthe sense that it constitutes the only viable attitude for anyone who really wishesto get to the roots of the difficulties afflicting the modern world: the thinking ofBeing signifies care for the Lichtung that translates into dispositions such as letting-be (Gelassenheit), reservedness (Verhaltenheit) and deep awe (Scheu). ForHeidegger, then, the old scholastic (and Spinozistic) principle according to whichoperari sequitur esse (acting follows being) remains true, and in a radical sense. Fromthis point of view, for the one who truly thinks, to write an ethics or a politics is awasted effort. Once again, not because ethics and politics are unimportant, butbecause that which it should regulate is already governed by a higher power: thatof technology. The old question Was tun? (What is to be done?) has now beenreplaced by a new question: Was lassen? (What is to be let-be?).

No one has interpreted the meaning of this fatal outcome of the Heideggeriandiagnosis of technology better than Gnther Anders. In the second volume of DieAntiquiertheit des Menschens, reversing the eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, he wrote:

It is not enough to change the world. This is what we do and what to a great extenthappens even without our intervention. We have, instead, to interpret this change in orderthat the world does not continue to change without us and in order that it does not, in theend, change into a world without us.35

Yet what Leo Strauss says is also true: Here is the great trouble: the only greatthinker in our time is Heidegger. What does this mean? Why is it a great trouble that the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger? In his youth, stillunder the spell of Max Weber, Strauss heard Heidegger lecture in Freiburg. Hesaid to his friend, Rosenzweig: In comparison to Heidegger, Weber appeared tome like an orphan child in regard to precision and probing and competence.And again: I had heard Heideggers interpretation of certain sections of Aristotle,and some time later I heard Werner Jaeger in Berlin interpret the same texts;Charity compels me to limit my comparison to the remark that there was no comparison.36

Yet in 1933 Heidegger became a follower of Nazism. Strauss was compelled toopen his eyes and became one of his most severe critics. In his lectures at theUniversity of Chicago, when speaking of Heidegger, he would not utter his name.However, his judgement was by no means clouded: The most stupid thing I coulddo would be to close my eyes or to reject his work.

Here we see the problem: if we recognize, with Strauss, that Heidegger hasbeen one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, and thus a mind betterequipped than most to judge, how can we explain the fact that he placed himselfat the service of a terrible totalitarianism? And what consequences should we drawin evaluating his work and his influence?

The problematic emerges when Heidegger moves his inquiry from an analysisof the structures of individual existence, as developed in Being and Time, to thedimension in which the individual Dasein has been thrown: destiny, tradition,


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history, the shared inheritance that places Dasein in a community. It is the per-spective of the so-called turn. This is when concepts such as people, spirit,language, race enter into Heideggers philosophical vocabulary. There are alsoreferences to the politics of the day; Hitler and Mussolini are mentioned at leasttwice by him. How is it possible that so vigilant a thinking as Heideggers did notsee the political reality happening around him? However, Heidegger was not an isolated case. Today, his name stands out among the examples of political stupidity allied with philosophical profundity. But at the time, there was a wide-spread political illiteracy among German professors of philosophy. The case ofHeidegger is paradigmatic of a more general and scandalous dissociation betweenphilosophy and the capacity for political judgement. It raises a serious problem:there is something in the way in which contemporary philosophy relates to poli-tics that does not work. There is a kind of short-circuit between theory andpractice; a discrepancy between the regime of the solitary thinker and the com-mon life of the people.

Hannah Arendt, a student of Heidegger and more aware of the problem thanmost, has said that theory and political judgement are heterogeneous capacities.37And she defended the primacy of the latter over the former. Yet this is not enough.The opposition of the capacity to judge political illiteracy, against the apoliticalcharacter of the theoretician, is important. Yet it is not sufficient. For politicaljudgement in its turn, rests on hidden assumptions, on a ground that it pre-supposes and that it cannot dominate. And who, if not the theoretician, can recallhis own presuppositions? Heidegger was as politically illiterate as he was a masterin the anamnesis of what is not-said and not-asked.

The main problem, correctly identified by Strauss, at least helps us to formu-late a question: how is it possible today to reconcile philosophy and politics afterthe only great thinker of our time has set them apart?

Notes

1. Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in (1998) Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeill, p. 268.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. The first account of the debate was provided by the collection edited by Manfred Riedel(1974) Rehabilitierung der praktschen Philosophie. Freiburg: Rombach. For a review of thewhole debate, see F. Volpi (1980) La rinascit della filosofia pratica in Germania, inClaudio Pacchiani (ed.) Filosofia pratica e scienza politica, pp. 1197. Padua: Francisci.

3. See in particular, F. Volpi (1984) Heidegger e Aristotele. Padua: Daphne. (1996) Dasein asPraxis: The Heideggerian Assimilation and the Radicalisation of the Practical Philosophyof Aristotle, in Christopher Macann (ed.) Critical Heidegger, pp. 2766. London and NewYork: Routledge. (1994) Being and Time: A Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics?, inTheodore Kisiel and John Van Buren (eds) Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in hisEarlier Thought, pp. 195211. New York: New York University Press. (1992) Seminein,lgein, apophinesthai als hermenuein: Die Ontologisierung der Sprache beim frhenHeidegger in Rckgriff auf Aristoteles, in E. Rudolph and H. Wismann (eds) Sagen, wasdie Zeit ist. Analysen zur Zeitlichkeit der Sprache, pp. 2142. Stuttgart: Metzler. (1996) La


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question du logos dans larticulation de la facticit chez le jeune Heidegger, lectuerdAristote, in J.-F. Courtine (ed.) Heidegger 19191929: De lhermneutique de la facticit la mtaphysique du Dasein, pp. 3365. Paris: Vrin. For an overall view of Heideggersconfrontation with Aristotle in the wider context of Aristotelian scholarship in the 20thcentury, see Enrico Berti (1992) Aristotele nel Novecento. Roma and Bari: Laterza.

4. Martin Heidegger (2001) Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation intoPhenomenological Research, tr. R. Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Heidegger (1999) Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity, tr. John Van Buren.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

5. Martin Heidegger (1989) Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeigeder hermeneutischen Situation), Dilthey-Jahrbuch 6: 23569. The text first appeared intranslation as (1992) Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle:Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation, tr. Michael Baur, Man and World 25: 35592.It has since been republished in John van Buren (ed.) (2002) Supplements: From the EarliestEssays to Being and Time and Beyond, pp. 111145. New York: State University of NewYork Press.

6. Martin Heidegger (2002) Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe, vol.18. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman. It is in this course that one findsHeideggers striking summation of the life of Aristotle: He lived, he worked, he died (p.5) and also the provocative translation of Aristotles well-known definition of man aszoon logon echon, which Heidegger renders as: man is a living being that reads thedaily papers (p. 108).

7. Martin Heidegger (1997) Platos Sophist, tr. Richard Rojcewicz and Andr Schuwer.Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

8. Martin Heidegger (1994) Einfhrung in die Phnomenologische Forschung. Frankfurt amMain: Vittorio Klostermann.

9. Martin Heidegger (1995) Logik: Die Frage nach dem Wahrheit. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann.

10. Martin Heidegger (2004) Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann.

11. Martin Heidegger (1975) Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klosterman. (1982) The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstadter.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

12. Martin Heidegger (1995) Aristotle, Metaphysics Q 13 On the Essence and Actuality of Force,tr. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

13. Heidegger (1999, in n. 4), p. 4.14. As is well known, Heideggers critique of the Husserlian understanding of human life as

subjectivity became clear when they collaborated on the preparation of an entry onphenomenology for the Encyclopedia Britannica. The various versions of this article andHeideggers critical comments were published by Walter Biemel in Edmund Husserl(1962) Phnomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, Husserliana, 9. TheHague: Nijhoff.

15. Martin Heidegger (1980) Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson,16, 69b. Oxford: Blackwell. The terms Aufflligkeit, Aufdringlichkeit and Aufsssigkeitare translated respectively as conspicuousness, obviousness and obstinacy.

16. Evidence of this understanding can be seen in the texts from this period that werepublished during Heideggers lifetime, from Comments on Karl Jasperss Psychology ofWorldviews, in Heidegger (n. 1), pp. 138, to Martin Heidegger (1997) Kant and theProblem of Metaphysics, tr. Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Themost important indication is in the lecture Phenomenology and Theology (1927), in


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which Heidegger states: existing is action, praxis (n. 1), p. 48. Also important are theintroductory part in the 19245 course, (n. 7) and the final part of the 1926 course (n.10).

17. Heidegger (n. 15), p. 215. Earlier, in place of Sorge, Heidegger had used the termSichbekmmerung, meaning preoccupation. In Platos Sophist, the same line from Aristotleis translated as All human beings have an inherent striving [Streben] to see (n. 7), p. 48.

18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6. 2, 1139b711, and 3. 5.19. Ibid. 6, 1140a2627; 1141b34.20. In an important note to Being and Time, 42, for example, Heidegger writes that he

arrived at his understanding of cura in the course of an attempt to interpret Augustinian that is, Greco-Christian anthropology with regard to the foundational principles ofAristotelian ontology. The fact that Heidegger only mentions ontology here, and notAristotles practical philosophy, should not deceive us, since the latter is itself a kind ofontology, the ontology of human life.

21. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 2. 3, 1220 b 27e 6, 1222 b 19.22. This reversal is the theme of the article by Jacques Taminiaux in this journal issue.23. Heidegger (n. 15), 2935. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6. 2, 1139b56.24. Heidegger (n. 15), 5460. Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Marburg Theology, in

Gadamer (1994) Heideggers Ways, pp. 2943, esp. p. 32. Albany: SUNY Press. But seealso the slightly different version of the same episode in Hans-Georg Gadamer (1986)Erinnerung an Heideggers Anfnge, Itinerari 25: nn. 12, pp. 516, esp. p.10.

25. Heidegger (n. 15), 60, 62.26. Ibid. 9.27. Ibid. 18, 26, 41, 69c.28. Heidegger (n. 11), 19a.29. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975) Truth and Method, Second Part, II 2. London: Sheed &

Ward. 30. Joachim Ritter (1969) Metaphysik und Politik: Studien zu Aristoteles und Hegel. Frankfurt

am Main: Suhrkamp.31. Hans Jonas (1984) The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological

Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.32. Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking, in Heidegger (1971) Poetry, Language,

Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter, pp. 14361. New York and London: Harper & Row.33. Martin Heidegger, Memorial Address, in (2003) Philosophical and Political Writings, ed.

Manfred Stassen, pp. 8796, p. 93. London: Continuum.34. Martin Heidegger, Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegels Interview, ibid. pp. 356.35. Gnther Anders (1980) Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, vol. 2, ber die Zerstrung des

Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution, p. 5. Munich: Beck.36. Leo Strauss (1989) An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism, in Strauss, The

Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures, pp. 278. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

37. Hannah Arendt (1982) The Life of the Mind, in Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy, ed.Ronald Beiner, vol. 1, p. 70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


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