European Journal of Political Theory

http://ept.sagepub.com In Whose Name?: Heidegger and Practical Philosophy

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

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article

In Whose Name?
Heidegger and Practical Philosophy
Franco Volpi
University of Padua

EJPT
European Journal of Political Theory
SAGE Publications Ltd, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi issn 1474-8851, 6 ( 1 ) 3151 [DOI: 10.1177/1474885107070828]

Translated by Niall Keane

a b s t r a c t : Although Heideggers relation to political philosophy is, at the very least, problematic, many figures who have contributed significantly to the field attended his courses in the 1920s (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Joachim Ritter, Gunther Anders and others). Heideggers work at that time was marked by an extensive engagement with Aristotle, and above all with Aristotles practical philosophy. This article approaches the question of Heidegger as a political thinker by returning to his reading of Aristotles practical philosophy in order to clarify the structural features of his thinking that inspired so many of his students to develop a political philosophy clearly influenced by him. Heidegger reads the Nicomachean Ethics as an ontology of human existence, centred on an interpretation of human existence (Dasein) as prxis. This reading inspired a renaissance of practical philosophy in Germany and beyond. However, as Arendt has shown, Heideggers ontologization closes prxis within a solipsistic horizon that deforms its political sense. It is this closure, which proves especially damaging when Heidegger begins to understand Dasein in relation to history and community, that many of his students have sought to reverse in their own work, thereby restoring a political dimension to a philosophy profoundly influenced by Heidegger. k e y w o r d s : 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 the problem of action in the age of nihilism? These are awkward questions. Not only did Heidegger neither write an ethics nor a politics, he even declared that he did not want to, criticizing all those who, appealing to values, endeavoured in vain to kindle some possible virtue and morality in the age of technology.
Contact address: Franco Volpi, Universit degli studi di Padova, Dipartimento di filosofia, Universit degli studi di Padova, piazza Capitaniato, 3, 35139 Padova, Italy.

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) In the Letter on Humanism he recounts how, soon after the publication of Being 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 more ardently for fulfilment as the obvious no less than the hidden perplexity of human beings soars to immeasurable heights.1 Is there any need to underline that from the 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 to the problems of the contemporary age? No, there is not; and moreover it reflects the fact that Heidegger always privileged the problems of ontology over those of practical philosophy and focused on the sole question that he made his own: the question of Being. Now in the face of this, it seems odd that precisely from out of Heideggers own school a number of thinkers were formed who made an essential contribution to ethical and political thought in the 20th century. It is surprising, looking down the list of participants at the seminars Heidegger held in Freiburg and Marburg in the 1920s, to see that many of those present such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Joachim Ritter, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, Max Horkheimer and others besides 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 the rehabilitation 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 the deep-seated reasons for this surprising and apparently inexplicable connection. It is to be found in the itinerary that Heidegger followed during the more than tenyear 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 at Marburg (19238). In this period, Heidegger devoted himself to a voracious appropriation of the practical philosophy of Aristotle, which served as a guiding thread for the resolution of problems arising from the theoreticism of modern philosophy. This is an appropriation that took place not only where he refers explicitly to Aristotle, but also where he departs from Aristotle in order to follow the course of his own inquiry. In short, it is an almost continuous engagement with Aristotle that paves the way for Being and Time, and this magnum opus reflects the motivation behind this engagement to the point that one could say, albeit provocatively, that it is a modern version of the Nicomachean Ethics a version in which unexpected structural analogies between Aristotles practical philosophy and Heideggers project of an existential analysis come to light. Now to understand not only the guiding thread that links Heidegger to the rehabilitation of practical philosophy, but also the reasons why, at a certain moment, this thread becomes invisible and the paths of Heideggers students veer off in different directions to that of their teacher, one must bear in mind the particular perspective from which Heidegger appropriates the fundamental categories of Aristotles practical philosophy. He transforms them into constitutive

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Volpi: In Whose Name? determinations for the Being of man, which is to say that he ontologizes them and nullifies their practical-moral force. When, later, Gadamer, Arendt, Ritter, Jonas and the other neo-Aristotelians undertook the rehabilitation of practical philosophy, on the one hand, they brought to fruition the teaching of the young Heidegger who had shown them the importance and relevance of practical reason in Aristotle; on the other hand, they did not follow him in this ontologization and each, in his or her own way, held firm to this or that practical category in Aristotle: Gadamer rehabilitating phrnesis, Hannah Arendt drawing attention to the concepts of prxis and vita activa, Joachim Ritter underlining the fundamental nature 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 of Heideggers philosophy. I shall then try to shed some light on analogies that make it possible to place these structures alongside corresponding intuitions in Aristotles practical philosophy.

The New Textual Sources

Today new textual sources on this hypothesis can be developed, constituted by the university courses that Heidegger held every semester from 1919. Almost all of these have now been published in Heideggers Gesamtausgabe and many have also been translated into English. For an understanding of Heideggers discovery of Aristotle as an alternative to neo-Kantianism and Husserlian phenomenology, we need to look above all to the courses that Heidegger held in his first period of teaching in Freiburg (191923), when he developed the phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle that was to become decisive for him. In particular, we need to look at the courses of the winter semester of 19212, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, and the summer semester of 1923, Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity.4 In addition, we also know that, as Heidegger was bringing the 19212 course to a close and was preparing another for the following semester, dedicated entirely to ontology and logic in Aristotle, Husserl, following an invitation from Paul Natorp and Georg Misch, put his young student forward for the chairs in philosophy that were soon to become free in Marburg and Gttingen. Husserl urged Heidegger to publish something quickly. In the autumn of 1922 Heidegger hurriedly prepared a synthesis of his own interpretation of Aristotle and, via Husserl, sent it to both Natorp and Misch. Natorp also received whole parts of Heideggers course from the summer semester of 1922. In Gttingen, the chair was given to Moritz Geiger, but Heideggers interpretation of Aristotle impressed Natorp and his colleagues, who offered him the chair at Marburg in preference to Richard Kroner and Heinz Heimsoeth. The text itself was then to have been published in the Jahrbuch fr Philosophie und phnomenologische Forschung, managed by Husserl. In reality, it remained in the dark and seemed to have been completely lost,

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) 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 to Misch was rediscovered amongst some old papers and was published on the occasion of the centenary of Heideggers birth, in 1989, with a brief introduction by Gadamer.5 The manuscript of the 1922 course, containing the whole of the Aristotle interpretation, has now also been found and published as volume 62 of the Gesamtausgabe (2005). Of particular importance for the thesis developed in this article is the course that Heidegger held in the summer semester of 1924 on Book 2 of Aristotles Rhetoric, recently published as Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie.6 Then there is the course from the winter semester of 1924 on Platos Sophist, which contains a detailed interpretation of Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics.7 Also important are the courses Einfhrung in die Phnomenologische Forschung (19234);8 Logik: Die Frage nach dem Wahrheit (19256);9 Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie (1926),10 in which Heidegger deals with the entire history of Ancient Greek philosophy, 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 to set out certain structural features of Heideggers discourse that reveal its proximity to elements in Aristotelian practical philosophy.

The Themes of the Engagement with Aristotle

It is necessary, first of all, to define the basic outlines of the thematic horizon of the engagement with Aristotle in the period leading up to Being and Time. It is characterized 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 and disclosure of meaning, not understood in terms of the validity of judgement; 2) the problem of the ontological constitution of human life, understood as Dasein; 3) the problem of temporality, understood in an originary or non-naturalistic sense, as the constitution of Dasein in its potentiality-for-Being (Seinknnen). The unitary horizon within which these problems are addressed is defined by the question of Being, which is still treated here in the sense of the question of the Being of beings; that is, of the fundamental ways of being in which a being is (and here Heidegger follows the guiding thread of the problem of the manifold sense of Being and of the search for its unitary meaning, prompted by a reading of Franz Brentanos 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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Volpi: In Whose Name? Dasein. The question to be addressed is: how does Heidegger come to treat this problem? My hypothesis is that the line of philosophical inquiry of the young Heidegger in the 1920s was determined by the search for a unitary sense that could support the plurivocity of beings. To this end, he examines, one after another, the four fundamental senses in which a being can be, to ascertain the one fundamental sense to which the others are related. Dissatisfied with the ousiological solution proposed by Brentano, as well as the traditional solution of the analogia entis, in the 1920s Heidegger works carefully through the sense of Being as true to see whether it could be the fundamental sense that supports and structures the others. In the same way, he goes on to examine, in turn, the meaning of Being according to potentiality and actuality, as we can see from the course of the summer semester of 1933 (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 of the problem of the manifold signification of being comes to discover and renew Aristotles practical philosophy. He comes to it via an examination of the meaning of Being as true, and, in particular, by way of an interpretation of Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics (which received a partial exposition in the course of the winter semester of 19245). This interpretation takes its point of departure from an engagement with Husserl in the course of which Heidegger appropriates and transforms the phenomenological viewpoint in both its method and its problems. In fact, in the context of the analysis of beings as true, which Heidegger undertakes in the 1920s, he aims to provide a philosophically rigorous determination of the original features of human life, Dasein, with particular reference to its being disclosive. Hence, in the attempt to overcome the Husserlian comprehension of human life in terms of subjectivity, he takes up and reinterprets the Aristotelian determination of psych as alethuein. The programme of an original theoretical science, hermeneutic of facticity or existential analytic, which is accomplished in Being and Time, springs from the marriage of the phenomenological access to the problem and the Aristotelian elements deployed. Referring to this phenomenological appropriation of Aristotle, carried out with Husserl, but also against him, at the beginning of the summer of 1923 in a retrospective autobiography on the path followed thus far, the young Heidegger writes: Companions in my search were the young Luther and the paragon Aristotle, whom Luther hated. Impulses were given by Kierkegaard, and Husserl opened my eyes.13 But how did Heidegger come to assign prxis a fundamental role?

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1)

The Nicomachean Ethics as an Ontology of Human Existence

There is evidence to suggest that what Heidegger was looking for in the Nicomachean Ethics and in the Aristotelian determination of prxis and practical philosophy was a way of responding to problems raised by phenomenology, but which the Husserlian conception of transcendental subjectivity, defined primarily on the basis of cognitive acts of a theoretical nature, could not address and left unresolved.14 Through a study of Aristotle, and in particular the Nicomachean Ethics, Heidegger came to the conviction that theora represents but one of the possible modalities by means of which man approaches things and discovers them. Beyond and prior to theora there lies the uncovering attitude of prxis and piesis, in which man relates to beings and brings their characters to light. Interpreting Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics within the thematic horizon of phenomenology, but going beyond Husserls overly theoretical understanding of subjectivity, Heidegger discovered in Aristotle a phenomenology of human existence richer and more original than that developed by Husserl. The Aristotelian one in fact deals with the three fundamental uncovering movements of life: piesis, prxis, theora, and the three corresponding dispositions: tchne, phrnesis and sopha. In this context one can highlight significant correspondences regarding the problems, the concepts and even in the terminology of Being and Time and the Nicomachean 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, distinguished by Heidegger during the 1920s and in Being and Time, i.e. Dasein, Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit, with the three Aristotelian determinations of prxis, piesis and theora. 1) Theora is an uncovering attitude which has a descriptive, verifying and observatory purpose, aiming at a pure and simple contemplation of beings, therefore grasping them in their truth, i.e. in their manifestness. The corresponding type of knowing is sopha. According to Heidegger, when human existence assumes this uncovering attitude, beings appear in a manner which is defined as Vorhandenheit, present-at-hand, i.e. simply being present. 2) Piesis is an uncovering attitude of the productive and manipulating kind, an attitude which is assumed with respect to being when one pursues the aim of the production of works; tchne is the species of knowing which guides it towards its outcome. When one is in this disposition, Being is introduced in the modality which Heidegger terms Zuhandenheit, in the sense of beingavailable or being-usable. 3) Prxis is an uncovering attitude put forward strictly in the activities which have their aim not outside of themselves in a work, like piesis, but rather in them-

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Volpi: In Whose Name? selves; phrnesis, prudentia or practical wisdom, is a type of knowledge that guides 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 characterizes the fundamental structure of Dasein. It is obvious that Heideggers aim is not merely to restore the Aristotelian determination of prxis, piesis and theora exactly as they were conceived by Aristotle. He exploits them freely, reformulating their meaning within his project of an analysis of Dasein and thus deeply modifying the structure, the character and articulation of such determinations. The most obvious transformation is that he assigns them an ontological character while simultaneously depriving them of the value of human action. Ultimately, for Heidegger, prxis, piesis and theora are neither dispositions nor particular kinds of action, but rather modalities of Being inherent in the structure of Dasein; they constitute the conditions of possibility of the particular theoretical, practical and productive comportments. Another significant transformation is the shift that takes place in the hierarchy of the three dispositions. It is no longer theora which is considered as the supreme determination but, instead, prxis. It becomes the modality of Being constitutive of Dasein, the ontological root of Dasein from which the possibility of a particular theoretical, practical and productive comportment depends. With this shift, even the relation to the other determinations changes: Zuhandenheit (in which piesis is restored and ontologized) and Vorhandenheit (which corresponds to theora) subsist in relation to the Being of Dasein (which fundamentally has the character of prxis). In fact, Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit indicate the ways of being in which a being respectively can be found according to the disposition of beingthere, which is originary praxis, a disposition which can be observational and contemplative, or productive and manipulative. Piesis and theora are two modalities of the unitary disposition of Dasein that Heidegger calls concern (Besorgen). In this way, leading piesis and theora back to a more original disposition that grounds 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, which is originary prxis. 2) Furthermore, against the traditional conception, he suggests that theora is not the primary disposition of human life, but is derived from a modification of the productive 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 therefore the determining transformations to which Heidegger subjects the Aristotelian determination of prxis, piesis and theora. But why these transformations? The main reason is, according to Heidegger, that with such determinations

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) Aristotle characterizes the fundamental uncovering attitudes of human existence, the ways in which the soul is in truth, and supplies, therefore, the first phenomenological analysis of existence. However, Aristotle still failed to explicitly address the issue of their unitary connection, the problem of the ontological unity in which they have their root and which is ultimately revealed to be originary temporality. As we know, Heidegger charges such an omission to the fact that Aristotle remained tied to a naturalistic understanding of time, which prevented him from articulating his understanding of Being in relation to the complete unfolding of the ecstases of time, i.e. past, present and future. Aristotle, tied to the metaphysics of presence, was unable to grasp temporality as the unitary ontological root of human existence.

Dasein as the Ontologization of Prxis

Why then, despite this criticism, should we interpret Dasein as a modern ontologized version of Aristotelian prxis? The reason for doing so is that Heideggers determination of the Being of existence, Dasein, is clearly attained within a practical horizon obtained by exploiting the characteristics that Aristotle attributes to prxis and transforming them into ontological features. In the 1920s, Heidegger himself suggests an equation of Dasein with prxis and treats Aristotles epistme praktik as an ontology of human life.16 Therefore, we should first of all interpret, in an eminently practical sense, the characterization of existence as having-to-be (Zu-sein), which Heidegger introduces in 4 and 9 of Being and Time. With such a characterization, which indicates the modality in which existence refers to itself, Heidegger wants to highlight the fact that existence relates to its Being, not merely in an attitude of observing and ascertaining through a self-involved manner, a theoreticalreflective introspection, an inspectio sui. Moreover, Dasein relates to itself through a 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. Existence does not relate to its own Being with the aim of neutrally observing its own essence and personal characteristics, in order to establish its nature as rational animal, but rather with the aim of deciding what to do with its own Being, with the aim of choosing, among a multiplicity of possibilities, which to take on and realize as its own. In such a sense, it could be said that existence must support the unbearable lightness of its Being. Certainly, such a practical characteristic of the ontological structure of Dasein as having-to-be is maintained by Heidegger only up to here. Later, when Dasein is no longer understood on the basis of itself, as in Being and Time, but starting from 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 as ex-istence which stands-out into the openness of Being. However, the insistence

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Volpi: In Whose Name? with which Heidegger retracts the practical connotation of Dasein allows us to conjecture that we may see in this the true Heideggerian understanding of the modality of Being of human existence in the epoch of Being and Time.

Care as the Root of the Practical Structure of Existence

Only by interpreting the self-reference of Dasein to its own Being in a practicalmoral sense is it possible to grasp the other connotations of Dasein in their structural unity. It is understandable, for example, why Heidegger characterizes the open character of Dasein, that is, its Erschlossenheit and the unity of determinations that define it, by means of a concept which is derived from the field of practical philosophy such as care (Sorge). Sorge, the term with which Heidegger reformulates in a practical sense, rather than a theoretical one, what Husserl understood by the term intentionality, is the ontologized resignification of that human trait which is a reaching towards, not merely perceptive and observative but rather practical and appetitive, and which Aristotle traced back to rexis, the appetite. The proof? Well, it would be enough to bring together the steps of the Aristotelian corpus in which the term rexis appears, or the corresponding verb orgomai, to see how Heidegger translates them, with amazing regularity, using the 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 (pntes nthropoi to eidnai orgontai phy sei) which Heidegger translates as: The care [Sorge] for seeing is essential to mans Being [Im Sein des Menschen liegt wesenhaft die Sorge des Sehens].17 It must be emphasized here that not only does he translate orgontai with Sorge, but he also ontologizes pntes nthropoi as Im Sein des Menschen. Within the same practical horizon, one can better understand why Heidegger characterizes Besorgen, concern, as the modality of Being in which Dasein is opened and related to things, in which the manipulating and productive attitude of piesis is rooted, as well as the observing and verifying attitude of theora, and the modality of Being in which existence relates to others as Frsorge. It is better understood in this way since these determinations have their unitary root in the practical character of Sorge. It is unnecessary here to follow all the paths which Heidegger took with the aim of tracing the unitary foundation which bears the practical structure of Dasein understood as having-to-be. As is well known, he characterizes this foundation by the fact that Dasein is not realized in the stability of Being and pure act, but is, in its 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 forced outside 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 its possibilities. Therefore, potentiality-for-being is a modality essentially character-

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) ized by temporal and ontological ecstasis, that is, from an exposure to becoming which characterizes Dasein as originally open and free for finitude. And since this freedom is not something that Dasein chooses to have, but is, instead, a constituent part of its ontological structure, consequently Dasein perceives it as something which it cannot rid itself of and therefore feels it like a weight: the weight of the unbearable lightness of its Being, a weight which is revealed in the fundamentally ontological feeling of anxiety.

The Four Theses that Heidegger Extracts

From the ontologization of prxis Heidegger draws the following fundamental consequences for an understanding of Dasein: 1) Contrary to the predominant metaphysics of presence, priority is given to the future. Because Dasein relates to its Being through a practical relation, choosing its Being, this Being which is time and again at stake is always a futural Being. It is impossible not to see in this a connection with Aristotles teaching that 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 own Being, 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 the characteristics of the practical knowledge of phrnesis, which Aristotle defines as a haut eidnai, a knowledge regarding oneself, that is, concerning t haut agath ki symphronta, the things that are good and useful for everyone.19 3) In consideration of all these elements Heidegger establishes a radical difference between the ontological constitution of Dasein and that which is other to Dasein, 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 and ontological 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 reflexive knowledge in relation to the self, achieved by means of self-scrutiny. The identity of Dasein is rather constructed through a practical modality, in the sense illustrated, according to which Dasein refers to its own Being, assuming its weight and responsibility. This self-reference of the practical-decisional type, another important thesis of Heideggers, is not only actualized at the level of higher intellective

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Volpi: In Whose Name? acts, but is also and indeed primarily a feature of actions traditionally considered inferior, e.g. the passions, the conditions of the soul, the Stimmungen. It takes place within the emotional structure of human life in its deepest layers. In this way, Heidegger takes a twofold distance from the metaphysical tradition, in which the specificity of human life was traced back to the objectifying and reifying categories of pure observation, and by and large gave too much emphasis to the theoretical, to presence and consciousness, privileging the higher cognitive and rational acts.

The Practical Philosophy of Aristotle as a Guiding Thread in the Analysis of Existence

It is clear that Heideggers analytical reading of Dasein according to this Aristotelian pattern can give rise to doubts and perplexity. Ultimately, it is too easy to object that, for example, in the presentation of his programme Heidegger also distances himself from Aristotle and explicitly criticizes the definition of man as a living being endowed with lgos, and, hence, also the Aristotelian prioritization of predicative speech (lgos apophantiks). To this one could also reply that Heidegger declared his debt to Aristotle on many other occasions, and even so in Being and Time where he scrupulously cancels out any trace of its productive assimilation.20 However, the best way to dispel such doubts and perplexity is to show concretely which Aristotelian determinations of practical philosophy Heidegger 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 by epistme praktik, a term that, and this is correct to emphasize, Heidegger translates as Ontologie des menschlichen Lebens, human life in its entirety is considered as prxis, 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 conservation of life, living pure and simple (zn), but, as a project of life, it is opened and unfolded, once the conservation of life is guaranteed, through the problem of how to live, that is, the problem of the choice of the form of life preferable for mankind. In as much as it is prxis, human life is opened to the problem of living well (u zn) and of the means to attain such a goal. This means that man as a political animal endowed with lgos should assume the task of deliberation (boleusis), of choosing and deciding (prohiresis) the way and form of its life, orienting itself towards that which it thinks better and preferable. As we know, it is the wise and prudent man (phrnimos) who accomplishes good deliberation (euboula), good choice and good decision, arriving therefore at acting well (eupraxa) and living well (u zn), and thus being happy (eudaimona). This basic insight of Aristotles is appropriated by Heidegger by means of an ontologization that radicalizes and intensifies its fundamental meaning. For Heidegger, too, Dasein is a type of being whose Being is an issue for it, and pre-

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) 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 Aristotle did, about t haut agath ki symphronta. And as in Aristotle, it is by pursuing phrnesis that one succeeds in those decisions and actions of life, so in Heidegger Dasein realizes itself authentically (phrnimos) only when listening to the call of conscience, 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 the help 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 that characterizes 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 level of 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 the Aristotelian corpus, and a reading of Aristotle given new life by a sensitivity for what is philosophically relevant.

The Transformation of the Problem

It 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 proposes of Aristotles practical philosophy. Yet it is possible to indicate how he derives further determinations for his own analysis of Dasein by stating them in a strictly ontological sense. In fact, if the fundamental insights of Aristotles practical philosophy represent an essential aid against the theoretical unilateralism of metaphysics, especially modern metaphysics, they should then be freed from the metaphysical-anthropological residuum which they carry within themselves. The Aristotelian understanding of prxis, not sufficiently ontologized, is situated within the framework of a 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 which the practical understanding of human life can be oriented. Every substantial support that is valid for the metaphysical tradition is considered a derivative and defective element with respect to original acting, the prxis that constitutes the Being of Dasein. The latter must only be understood in reference to itself, outside of every prefiguration and predetermination. In the absence of a frame of reference, prxis is constituted from within itself. It is constituted in such a way that it becomes an original ontological determination, self-teleological, independent and self-oriented: a ho hneka, Worumwillen.

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Volpi: In Whose Name? A fundamental difference comes to light here. For Aristotle, practical science represents a particular consideration of human life, which thematizes life in as much as it is an action that aims at the realization of a to do (praktn). But this is just one possible way, amongst others, of considering it, for example, the understanding 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 philosophy. In any case, it does not exhaust the understanding of the human life. For Heidegger, instead, these practical determinations do not exist alongside other possible determinations, but entirely occupy understanding and the constitution 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, but indicates a determination to which it is indissolubly bound and to which it cannot escape. Decision, for example, or prxis itself, are no longer conceived as possibilities that existence can put into action at will, but become ontological predicates of its Being, characterizing it independently of its will and its free choice. This involves a further shift in the characterization of prxis. Conceived as a possibility that may or may not be grasped, it possesses a positive value, it is a possible way to project and to realize the Being of man. If, on the other hand, it is understood as the ontological structure of Dasein, it assumes the character of inevitability, becoming something that is impossible to do without. In this conception, prxis is present not only in the execution of certain actions, but is always already given with existence itself, insofar as it constitutes its nature and precedes every particular action. It is this character of inevitability, deriving from the ontologization of prxis as the structure of existence that confers upon its Being the character of weight, which gives the impression that its lightness is unbearable. The ontologization of prxis finally provokes another transformation: it produces, 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 the rootedness in a koinona. Heideggers ontologization closes prxis within a solipsistic horizon that deforms its practico-political configuration. It was Hannah Arendt, and I can do no more than note this in passing here, who decisively criticized this reductive aspect of Heideggers rehabilitation of prxis, and reversed, in her interpretation of vita activa, the direction of the Heideggerian recovery. What in Heidegger is marked by inauthenticity, i.e. the public dimension, becomes for her the authentic dimension par excellence. Authentic prxis is, for her, public and political action.22 To sum up, Heideggers ontologization of prxis provokes a series of radical transformations which should be neither forgotten nor removed. But the existing correspondences emerge and impose themselves in spite of all such changes. Examining how the Heideggerian configuration of the open structure of existence restores and reformulates certain decisive moments of the Aristotelian under-

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) standing of the practico-moral character of human life, one can establish an entire inventory of correspondences with Aristotle: 1) It can be shown how the three fundamental existentials which define the ontological constitution of existence, i.e. understanding (Verstehen), attunement (Befindlichkeit) and discourse (Rede), restore the fundamental sense of the determination of the principle of man as appetitive intellect (nos orektiks) or intellectual appetite (orxis dianoetik) which Aristotle puts forward in Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics.23 2) In this context, conscience (Gewissen) is the Heideggerian version of Aristotelian 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 the determination by means of which Aristotle indicates the fact that phrnesis is a knowledge concerning oneself (t haut eidnai).26 5) The connotation of existence as Worumwillen is the ontologization of the selfteleology of prxis: since the distinctive feature of the latter lies in the fact that it is not oriented towards anything else (hnek tinos), like piesis, but towards itself, having its own end within itself (ho ones hneka), and since existence is eminently prxis ontologized, it must possess, in a lofty manner, the character of self-teleology, it must be a Worumwillen, a for-the-sake-of-which. This is exactly the character that Heidegger attributes to it by means of this characterization.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? Surely not. Indeed, the correspondence could be pushed even further, to the point of establishing an analogy between the relation that Aristotle sets up between phronetic knowledge and practical science and the relation in Heidegger between authentic 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 distinguished from the pure knowledge of theory by its consequences for prxis. And in Heidegger, too, something similar happens: philosophy, insofar as it represents a higher form of existence, presupposes the choice of an authentic life. At the same time, the theoretical rewards of this higher form of life are not separate from this life itself, but reflect back upon it and promote its accomplishment. Of course, one cannot neglect the fact that in taking up the intuitions of Aristotles practical philosophy, Heidegger subjects them to a transformation that

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Volpi: In Whose Name? I have called ontologization. And it is clear that this is how he intends to grasp what eluded Aristotle; namely, the unity of the essential features of human life, the ontological foundation of Dasein, originary temporality (Zeitlichkeit). This is why, once the ontologization has been completed, Heidegger distances himself from Aristotle: he, Aristotle, could not grasp originary temporality as the unitary ontological foundation of all the determinations of human life, which were therefore apprehended episodically according to the chronological and not the kairological understanding of time. Even the fact that Aristotle explicitly raises the wellknown aporia of the relation between the soul and time (Physics 4. 14. 223a219), of which Heidegger himself provides a masterly interpretation, is not enough to convince Heidegger to exclude Aristotle completely from the horizon of the naturalistic understanding of time.28 It should be clear by now why Heidegger insisted on the ontologization of the problem, 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, he left 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 engagement with Aristotle. Yet, one can also understand why his students subsequently made much of what they had learnt regarding the relevance of Aristotles practical philosophy. In this way, Gadamer proposed a rehabilitation of phrnesis. In a brilliantly conceived chapter in Truth and Method (1960), he defends the hermeneutic actuality of Aristotles ethics, referring in particular to the practico-moral understanding that Aristotle defines as phrnesis.29 Although he initially intended solely to use such 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 philosophy. Indeed, such an appeal has been a focal point for much of the revival of Aristotles ethics and politics, not only in philosophy, but also in other fields, which have been called neo-Aristotelianism. Rereading that chapter of Truth and Method in the light of what has been said about the teaching of the young Heidegger, it is almost tangible how Gadamers rediscovery depends on the interpretation of Aristotle given by Heidegger at Freiburg and Marburg. This dependency is clearer still, if one looks at an earlier elaboration of the ideas set out in this same chapter of Truth and Method, which is contained in the essay Practical Knowledge 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 of Aristotles practical philosophy that Gadamer made in later writings such as Hermeneutics 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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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) world of work and technology, she drew the attention of contemporary thought to the Aristotelian determination of prxis and its fundamental significance for a genuine understanding of the political, for an analysis of the various forms of human plurality, and for a critique of the political institutions corresponding to them. As she herself acknowledged, Arendts programme, too, depends on the teaching of the young Heidegger. As amazing as it may seem, especially in view of the political obtuseness he demonstrated in 1933, it was Heidegger who first showed that the original character of human life is acting, prxis understood in the Aristotelian sense of action distinct from production or theory. It is Heidegger 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. Putting Heideggers teaching to use, Arendt aimed to deconstruct the theoreticism of traditional political thought that imprisoned the open character of action within objectifying and reifying frameworks and categories that are quite foreign to it. Her conviction, inspired by Heidegger, is that western political thought closes off the character of possibility of political action and brings it back down to the horizon of mere production. Such a tendency has been taken to an extreme in the modern world. Here, every human activity is reduced to work; the political, as such, is no more than politics, that is, a mechanism for the conservation and administration of power. The authentic and original characteristics of the political are totally eclipsed. To oppose this tendency, she sets out to re-evaluate the features of political action discredited by the tradition: its plurality and unpredictability, its unrepeatability and irreversibility, its originality in the twofold sense of being new and a new beginning, in a word, its freedom. It is an acting without ends because it knows only a disinterested finality: glory (recognized since Homer), freedom (praised from Athens to the classical period), justice and equality, understood as expressions of the original dignity of all human beings. Heidegger rediscovered prxis, but he closed it off within the horizon of a rigid solipsism of decision, where existence stands naked before its destiny. Arendt takes up this intuition, but turns it around into a celebration of the intersubjective, plural and public nature that is the political nature of acting. Joachim Ritter, himself a student of Heideggers for a certain time, proposed a rehabilitation of ethos in a series of studies collected in Metaphysik und Politik and through the works of his own students (Gnther Bien, Willi Oelmller, Robert Spaemann and others).30 Bringing together the Aristotelian idea of practical knowledge and the Hegelian conception of Sittlichkeit concrete ethical life as opposed to the abstract universality of Moralitt he underlined the necessary interpenetration of practical reason with the concrete context of its actualization and, against the current of ethical intellectualism and contemporary political utopianism, gave priority in the evaluation of acting to the accomplishment of a form of life, that is, to a concrete ethos, over and above the observation of universal but abstract principles.

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Volpi: In Whose Name? Hans Jonas, too, in his project of an ethics for the age of technology at least in the way that the foundational part of his Imperative of Responsibility returns to the Aristotelian concept of the good (agathon) as distinct from the modern sense of value demonstrates a knowledge of the Nicomachean Ethics that quite plainly depends on the teaching of the young Heidegger.31 If it is clear that all these initiatives can be reconsidered in the light of the young Heideggers rehabilitation of Aristotles practical philosophy, it is also true that the way Heideggers students used his teaching leads in a different direction to that which he originally intended and, even more so, in relation to his later thought. After the turn, further radicalizing the ontologization of the problem of acting set out in the 1920s, Heidegger focused his attention increasingly on the question of Being as event. The impossibility of writing an ethics, or a politics, was in this period underlined in the clearest of terms. Not because ethics or politics are not important, but because they remain subordinate or derivative with respect to the thinking of Being. The thinking of Being, in fact, recognizes that the present epoch is determined by the domination of technology, under which everything is treated as a product of human work, an artefact, and thus the whole of Being is seen according to a single modality of Being, and Being itself, in the inexhaustible multiplicity of its significations, is forgotten. Technology, as the destiny of the present epoch, leaves no room for anything but a technical and manipulative form of comportment: 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 Thinking is an implicit allusion to the three comportments piesis, prxis and theora, Heideggers response, according to which the homelessness of modern man derives from the absence of an adequate dwelling, is loud and clear: imprisoned in the iron cage of technology, man is without ethico-political prxis and has not yet developed an anthropological comportment to match the challenges of technoscience.32 With respect to the extreme realities produced by modern technology, in the advancing desert of nihilism, every recourse to ethics and to politics remains second best. In the presence of the almost geological force of the epochal displacements attributable to technology, virtue and morality take on the beauty of rare fossils. One does not have to be Heideggerian to agree with his assertion that: it is not that the world is becoming entirely technical which is really uncanny. Far more uncanny is our being unprepared for this transformation.33 To which one can add another crucial assertion:
. . . the global movement of modern technology is a force whose scope in determining history can scarcely be overestimated. A decisive question for me today is: how can a political system accommodate itself to the technlogical age, and which political system would this be.34

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

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1) an indication of comportment, alternative to ethics and traditional politics, in the sense that it constitutes the only viable attitude for anyone who really wishes to get to the roots of the difficulties afflicting the modern world: the thinking of Being signifies care for the Lichtung that translates into dispositions such as letting-be (Gelassenheit), reservedness (Verhaltenheit) and deep awe (Scheu). For Heidegger, then, the old scholastic (and Spinozistic) principle according to which operari sequitur esse (acting follows being) remains true, and in a radical sense. From this point of view, for the one who truly thinks, to write an ethics or a politics is a wasted effort. Once again, not because ethics and politics are unimportant, but because that which it should regulate is already governed by a higher power: that of technology. The old question Was tun? (What is to be done?) has now been replaced by a new question: Was lassen? (What is to be let-be?). No one has interpreted the meaning of this fatal outcome of the Heideggerian diagnosis of technology better than Gnther Anders. In the second volume of Die Antiquiertheit 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 extent happens even without our intervention. We have, instead, to interpret this change in order that the world does not continue to change without us and in order that it does not, in the end, change into a world without us.35

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Yet what Leo Strauss says is also true: Here is the great trouble: the only great thinker 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, still under the spell of Max Weber, Strauss heard Heidegger lecture in Freiburg. He said to his friend, Rosenzweig: In comparison to Heidegger, Weber appeared to me 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 to open his eyes and became one of his most severe critics. In his lectures at the University 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 could do would be to close my eyes or to reject his work. Here we see the problem: if we recognize, with Strauss, that Heidegger has been one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, and thus a mind better equipped than most to judge, how can we explain the fact that he placed himself at the service of a terrible totalitarianism? And what consequences should we draw in evaluating his work and his influence? The problematic emerges when Heidegger moves his inquiry from an analysis of the structures of individual existence, as developed in Being and Time, to the dimension in which the individual Dasein has been thrown: destiny, tradition,

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Volpi: In Whose Name? history, the shared inheritance that places Dasein in a community. It is the perspective of the so-called turn. This is when concepts such as people, spirit, language, race enter into Heideggers philosophical vocabulary. There are also references to the politics of the day; Hitler and Mussolini are mentioned at least twice by him. How is it possible that so vigilant a thinking as Heideggers did not see 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 widespread political illiteracy among German professors of philosophy. The case of Heidegger is paradigmatic of a more general and scandalous dissociation between philosophy and the capacity for political judgement. It raises a serious problem: there is something in the way in which contemporary philosophy relates to politics that does not work. There is a kind of short-circuit between theory and practice; a discrepancy between the regime of the solitary thinker and the common life of the people. Hannah Arendt, a student of Heidegger and more aware of the problem than most, has said that theory and political judgement are heterogeneous capacities.37 And 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 apolitical character of the theoretician, is important. Yet it is not sufficient. For political judgement in its turn, rests on hidden assumptions, on a ground that it presupposes and that it cannot dominate. And who, if not the theoretician, can recall his own presuppositions? Heidegger was as politically illiterate as he was a master in the anamnesis of what is not-said and not-asked. The main problem, correctly identified by Strauss, at least helps us to formulate a question: how is it possible today to reconcile philosophy and politics after the 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 the whole debate, see F. Volpi (1980) La rinascit della filosofia pratica in Germania, in Claudio 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 as Praxis: The Heideggerian Assimilation and the Radicalisation of the Practical Philosophy of Aristotle, in Christopher Macann (ed.) Critical Heidegger, pp. 2766. London and New York: Routledge. (1994) Being and Time: A Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics?, in Theodore Kisiel and John Van Buren (eds) Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in his Earlier Thought, pp. 195211. New York: New York University Press. (1992) Seminein, lgein, apophinesthai als hermenuein: Die Ontologisierung der Sprache beim frhen Heidegger in Rckgriff auf Aristoteles, in E. Rudolph and H. Wismann (eds) Sagen, was die Zeit ist. Analysen zur Zeitlichkeit der Sprache, pp. 2142. Stuttgart: Metzler. (1996) La

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European Journal of Political Theory 6(1)

question du logos dans larticulation de la facticit chez le jeune Heidegger, lectuer dAristote, 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 Heideggers confrontation with Aristotle in the wider context of Aristotelian scholarship in the 20th century, see Enrico Berti (1992) Aristotele nel Novecento. Roma and Bari: Laterza. Martin Heidegger (2001) Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, tr. R. Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger (1999) Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity, tr. John Van Buren. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Martin Heidegger (1989) Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation), Dilthey-Jahrbuch 6: 23569. The text first appeared in translation 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 Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, pp. 111145. New York: State University of New York Press. Martin Heidegger (2002) Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 18. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman. It is in this course that one finds Heideggers 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 as zoon logon echon, which Heidegger renders as: man is a living being that reads the daily papers (p. 108). Martin Heidegger (1997) Platos Sophist, tr. Richard Rojcewicz and Andr Schuwer. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Martin Heidegger (1994) Einfhrung in die Phnomenologische Forschung. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Martin Heidegger (1995) Logik: Die Frage nach dem Wahrheit. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Martin Heidegger (2004) Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. 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. Martin Heidegger (1995) Aristotle, Metaphysics Q 13 On the Essence and Actuality of Force, tr. Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger (1999, in n. 4), p. 4. 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 on phenomenology for the Encyclopedia Britannica. The various versions of this article and Heideggers critical comments were published by Walter Biemel in Edmund Husserl (1962) Phnomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, Husserliana, 9. The Hague: Nijhoff. Martin Heidegger (1980) Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, 16, 69b. Oxford: Blackwell. The terms Aufflligkeit, Aufdringlichkeit and Aufsssigkeit are translated respectively as conspicuousness, obviousness and obstinacy. Evidence of this understanding can be seen in the texts from this period that were published during Heideggers lifetime, from Comments on Karl Jasperss Psychology of Worldviews, in Heidegger (n. 1), pp. 138, to Martin Heidegger (1997) Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, tr. Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. The most important indication is in the lecture Phenomenology and Theology (1927), in

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

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Volpi: In Whose Name?

which Heidegger states: existing is action, praxis (n. 1), p. 48. Also important are the introductory part in the 19245 course, (n. 7) and the final part of the 1926 course (n. 10). Heidegger (n. 15), p. 215. Earlier, in place of Sorge, Heidegger had used the term Sichbekmmerung, meaning preoccupation. In Platos Sophist, the same line from Aristotle is translated as All human beings have an inherent striving [Streben] to see (n. 7), p. 48. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6. 2, 1139b711, and 3. 5. Ibid. 6, 1140a2627; 1141b34. 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 of Aristotelian ontology. The fact that Heidegger only mentions ontology here, and not Aristotles practical philosophy, should not deceive us, since the latter is itself a kind of ontology, the ontology of human life. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 2. 3, 1220 b 27e 6, 1222 b 19. This reversal is the theme of the article by Jacques Taminiaux in this journal issue. Heidegger (n. 15), 2935. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6. 2, 1139b56. Heidegger (n. 15), 5460. Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Marburg Theology, in Gadamer (1994) Heideggers Ways, pp. 2943, esp. p. 32. Albany: SUNY Press. But see also 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. Heidegger (n. 15), 60, 62. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 18, 26, 41, 69c. Heidegger (n. 11), 19a. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975) Truth and Method, Second Part, II 2. London: Sheed & Ward. Joachim Ritter (1969) Metaphysik und Politik: Studien zu Aristoteles und Hegel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hans Jonas (1984) The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking, in Heidegger (1971) Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstadter, pp. 14361. New York and London: Harper & Row. Martin Heidegger, Memorial Address, in (2003) Philosophical and Political Writings, ed. Manfred Stassen, pp. 8796, p. 93. London: Continuum. Martin Heidegger, Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegels Interview, ibid. pp. 356. Gnther Anders (1980) Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, vol. 2, ber die Zerstrung des Lebens im Zeitalter der dritten industriellen Revolution, p. 5. Munich: Beck. Leo Strauss (1989) An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism, in Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures, pp. 278. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 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.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

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