The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1989) Vol. XXVIII, Supplement

HEIDEGGERS DESTRUCTION OF PHRONESIS Robert Bernasconi Memphis State University

The analysis of environmentality and worldhood in sections 15 to 18 of Being and Time are among the most carefully scrutinized pages in the Heideggerian corpus. It is here that Heidegger introduces his account of equipment as ready-to- hand for a special kind of manipulative seeing which he calls Umsicht or circumspection; here that he gives his account of how the worldly character of the environment announces itself when things prove unusable, go missing, or stand in the way; here that he develops the Husserlian account of reference and signs; and it is also here that the worldhood of the world is identified as the circular structure of the “for- the-sake-of-which,” whereby that wherein Dasein understands itself is that for which it lets beings be encountered. Whether these analyses are understood as some of the most original pages in Heidegger or whether they are understood as an echo of pragmatism, as is sometimes suggested, they are almost invariably understood to be in contrast with the approach to the same issues adopted by traditional ontology. Indeed, Heidegger himself prefaces these sections with the remark, “When it comes to the problem of analyzing the world‘s worldhood ontologically, traditional ontology operates in a blind alley, if indeed, it sees the problem at all.”’ I shall be arguing, however, that Heidegger’s claim, as a claim about the originality of his ontology of worldhood,2 cannot be extended to all of the leading concepts of the analysis. In particular, the terms Umsicht and Worumwillen belong to Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle, as developed in the years 1922 to 1924, and, I will suggest, carry this context with them into Being and Time.

For most of this paper I shall be occupied with the task of exploring Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle, and particularly his interpretation of Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics, insofar as it can be reconstructed on the available evidence. I shall, however, from time to time refer to sections 15 to 18 and at the close of the paper address, albeit only in a very preliminary way, the question of the implications for our understanding of Heidegger of this reinscription of

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Aristotle in Being and Time. Research of this kind, which, when confined to questions of influence or sources, can seem to be of only limited philosophical significance, is decisive for a n appreciation of Being and Time because it leads to a transformation in our understanding of the character of the claims Heidegger makes there. Briefly, and somewhat too schematically, it amounts to recognizing that the destruction of the history of ontology, which according to the basic plan of Being and Time was reserved for the never published Second Part of the book, is already at work in the First Part (SZ

It will be recalled that for Heidegger the destruction of the history of ontology is nothing critical. Or, rather such criticism as it contains is, as Heidegger puts it, “aimed at ‘today’ and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems” (SZ 22-23). When he says that what is to be destroyed is the traditional content of ancient ontology, he means that the self-evidence of the categories and concepts we inherit from the tradition are to be called into question using the resources of the tradition itself (SZ 22). The destruction is aimed not at the discovery of something new, but at discovering the originary experiences from which these concepts have, as he puts it, “been in part quite genuinely drawn” (SZ 21). The task, as Heidegger conceived it in the 192Os, was not to leave the tradition behind, but to appropriate it positively. He offers a clear example of appropriation in his attempt to show that the traditional concept of truth as correspondence was derivative of the more primordial conception of unconcealment (SZ 220). The ontological task of disclosing the foundations of the traditional conception cannot be separated from the historical task of recovering wha t remains inaccessible, so long as contemporary problems are projected back onto texts to which they are quite foreign. And if philosophy must be practiced historically, if this is a precondition of breaking through the self-evidence of certain tradit ional ways of posing or addressing a problem, we have already cause to be suspicious of the way in which Being and Time is often presented, such that it is supposed to provide the warrant for its own discourse on the basis of phenomenological descriptions whose accuracy each of us is allegedly capable of affirming or denying by appeal to our own e~per ience .~

This renunciation of criticism in the negative sense of fault- finding, its exclusion from what is designated genuine philosophical activity, is reminiscent of, for example, Hegel’s

39-40).

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concept of philosophical criticism. Arguably it provides a greater obstacle to reading Heidegger than the notorious difficulty of his language. The fact that in his readings in the history of philosophy Heidegger has embedded his own questioning so deeply into his interpretations that he thinks with and not against his predecessors, has been a constant source of misunderstanding. Hans-Georg Gadamer, who attended Heidegger’s lectures on Aristotle in Marburg in the early 1920s, describes their effect as follows: “These were memorable interpretations, with respect to both the strength of their illustrative content and the philosophical perspectives they opened up. In Heidegger’s lectures we were often so personally touched that we no longer knew whether he was speaking of his own concern or that of Ari~totle.”~ This inability to distinguish Heidegger’s views from those of Aristotle led to uncertainty about his aims, as Gadamer records in another place. “Today no one would doubt that the basic purpose of Heidegger’s preoccupation with Aristotle was a critical and destructive one. At that time, however, this purpose was not so clear . . . Perhaps what happened then, not only to the students, but to Heidegger himself, was that the power of Aristotle, though an adversary, came to dominate him for a time.”5 Gadamer is perhaps right to say that there is now a consensus that Heidegger’s purpose in reading Aristotle was “critical and destructive,” but there is still a need to clarify how this should be understood, particularly in the light of Heidegger’s own warnings against construing the destruction as critical of anything other than contemporary historiography.

The uncertainty is reflected in the current interest in Heidegger’s retrieval of Aristotle. Until roughly the mid-1980s there had been virtually no detailed examination of the importance of Aristotle’s Ethics for Heidegger beyond the anecdotal evidence of his former students. Then, a number of scholars, working largely independently of each other, began to discover Aristotle’s Ethics in Being and Time. In addition to my own efforts, I am thinking particularly of essays by Jacques Taminiaux, k a n c o Volpi and to a lesser extent Tom Sheehan and Reiner Schurmann, as well as still unpublished papers by Walter Brogan, Ted Kisiel, Dennis Schmidt and John Van Buren.6 If one surveys the results of these different inquiries, one finds that there is a general readiness on the part of at least the majority of these scholars (including myself) to find the impact of Aristotle on Heidegger in the distinction between poiesis or producing, where the end is something outside the activity, and praxis or action, which

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is an end in itself. That precisely these terms have been emphasized has more to do with their use by another of Heidegger’s students, Hannah Arendt, than anything to be found in Heidegger’s texts7 It would be more accurate to locate Heidegger’s debt to Aristotle in the corresponding distinction between techne or craft and phronesis or practical wisdom. In any event, the general agreement within this group of scholars on the importance of Aristotle for Heidegger does not translate into a consensus on how that debt is reflected in Heidegger’s texts. So, for example, there are no less than four candidates between which to choose as Heidegger’s equivalent for Aristotle’s phronesis, which is usually translated as prudence or practical wisdom. They are Umsicht or circumspection, Verstehen or understanding, Entschlossen- heit or resoluteness and Gewissen or conscience.8 Even if it could be established that Heidegger had at one time or another used all of these words to translate from Greek to German, this nevertheless would not mean that the translation could be reversed and that each of these German words should on every occurrence be understood as reinscribing the same Greek word. Further study of Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle is clearly called for.9 In the present essay I shall limit myself to a relatively small number of texts, both Aristotelian and Heideggerian, in the full knowledge that my reading needs to be extended more broadly before it can be said to have addressed all the questions of interpretation that it raises.1° My interest here goes far beyond the specific question of whether Heidegger’s notion of Umsicht is in some sense a reinscription of Aristotle’s phronesis. All inquiries of this kind remain trapped within the approaches of doxography, intellectual history or the history of problems of which Heidegger was directly critical, unless one at the same time also poses the question of how to read the reinscription of the history of previous philosophy within a text which explicitly presents itself as a destruction of that history.

The attempt to reconstruct Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s Ethics is anyway at this time a somewhat reckless undertaking with so many of the key sources still unavailable. The most important text in this regard is almost certainly the 1924-25 lecture course, which was nominally devoted to Plato’s Sophist, but which began with a long examination of the Sixth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Although in 1976 it was announced as one of the first volumes to appear in the Gesarntausgabe, it has still not been published.’l Increasingly impatient scholars have had to rely on one or other of the transcripts of the course that are in limited

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circulation, insofar as they have had access to them.12 It is clear that, until an adequate edition has appeared of this and the other relevant lecture courses from the 19208, the whole question of Heidegger’s reinscription of Aristotle in Being and Time can be approached only with great caution and in full awareness that any conclusions reached can be only tentative or provisional.13 Another quite crucial text which has attracted the curiosity of scholars is Heidegger’s 1922 introduction to his never completed book on Ari~tot1e.l~ The copy in Gadamer’s possession had been destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War and it was not until March 1989 that another copy was found. By the end of the same year it was published in the Dilthey Jahrbuch under the title Ph finomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles.15

“Indication of the Hermeneutic Situation,” the subtitle Heidegger gives to the Aristotle Introduction, provides due warning that he will begin, not with the standard reading of Aristotle, which is nowhere addressed directly, but by raising philosophical difficulties-obstacles to the very practice of philosophy as usually conceived-at the most fundamental level. Indeed the opening pages are extraordinary for the degree to which they foreshadow the language and themes of Being and Time. Having identified the object of philosophical research to be human Dasein as it questions itself in its Being, he proceeds to outline an account of factical life in terms of care (PI 240). Care (Sorge) is presented, much as concern (Besorgen) is in Being and Time, in terms of the structure of the “to which” (Worauf) and the “with which” (Womit). Careful dealings are directed to the “with which” by a kind of sight called Umsicht or circumspection. Heidegger does not present this structure as part of his account of Aristotle, although he will use the same terms in his discussion of Aristotle as if they were Aristotle’s (PI 260 and 262). Nevertheless it is clear from the account of death, fallenness and temporality which follows, that Heidegger does not intend his account of factical life to be Aristotelian. Heidegger intersperses this account with certain remarks about the importance of historical investigation. He emphasizes the importance of the appropriation of the history of philosophy insofar as it intensifies questioning to the point where current understanding recoils on itself. Heidegger’s diagnosis is that philosophy today still moves inauthentically in Greek conceptuality (PI 238-39). The “authentic path” lies in a return to the original motivating sources. Heidegger calls this philosophy’s “destructive confrontation with its history” (PI 249) and also identifies it as a “phenomenological

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destruction” (PI 251). Like the destruction as it is presented in Being and Time, criticism of history is always directed only at the present (PI 239).

Heidegger’s Introduction is directed to Aristotle’s Physics where Being is understood as motion (Bewegtheit), but in preparation there is a discussion of Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics and the beginning of the Metaphysics. Heidegger’s entry-point into the Ethics in the Introduction to the projected Aristotle book, as in the 1924-25 lecture course, is Aristotle’s list of five ways-five dispositions-in which the soul attains truth in what it affirms or denies: nous, Sophia, episteme, techne and phronesis.16 The passage occurs in the Sixth Book of the Ethics at a point where Aristotle interrupts the previous discussion in which he had introduced the idea of intellectual virtues or excellences in terms of a distinction within the rational part of the soul between what are often called its scientific and its calculative part, where the former treats what is unchanging, whereas the latter deals with what is subject to change (NE 1139a 3-15). As I shall try to show later, it is not unimportant that Heidegger begins his reading where he does, but what is immediately striking are the ways in which he translates the five Greek words, avoiding the standard terms in an effort to convey the sense afresh. The most striking translation is that of phronesis, which the tradition knows as prudentia or practical reason. Heidegger employs the phrase “solicitous looking around oneself [circumspection]” (fiirsorgliches Sichumsehen [UmsichtJ). The terms Fiirsorge (corresponding perhaps to suggnome, at NE 1143a 20) and Umsicht both appear in Being and Time, but not so far as I am aware together.

Phronesis is the main focus of this section of the Introduction. There is nothing unusual about the way that Heidegger introduces phronesis by contrasting it with Sophia. He follows Aristotle’s division of the rational part of the soul. The arche of Sophia, its principle or its whence (Von- Wo-Aus), has the character of something necessary and lasting, whereas the arche ofphronesis is open to change and so, as Heidegger explains, is brought into concrete relation to the action (PI 258-59). What is striking is the way Heidegger then proceeds to contrast them as two ways of securing truth (Verwahrung), ways which temporalize themselves.

Phronesis secures the “for which and the how” of those dealings concerning human life which are not productive in the sense of poiesis, but are actions with the character of praxis. What this means is thatphronesis “makes the situation of action accessible.” This it does by holding fast to what

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Aristotle calls the hou heneka or “on account of which” ( Weswegen) of action, by setting the precisely determined whereto (Wozu) of action, and by grasping the “now” and prescribing the how of action. Heidegger writes “the arche is what it is always only in the concrete relatedness to the now” (PI 259). One can understand Heidegger as saying that to see the situation through phronesis is to see it in terms of one’s overall project or goal such that the O OW" of the situation shows not only what is to be done and how it is to be brought about, but also issues the command to act (epitaktikos, NE 1143a 8).

This interpretation of Aristotle has had a clear impact on subsequent accounts, such as Gadamer’s.17 It has a certain claim to fidelity, although it can always be argued that it remains incomplete by virtue of its neglect not only of the ethical excellences and the so-called practical syllogism, but also of the Politics, which is more closely integrated with the Ethics than many modern interpreters would appear to allow. Heidegger’s reading might even be seen as a valuable corrective to accounts of Aristotle which introduce alien (for example, Christian or perhaps Kantian) problems, without being aware that they are doing so. Aristotle does not construe practical reason as the application of predetermined rules to a given situation, even if he begins to move in that direction when he tries to give example, which almost always seems to blur the distinction between techne and phronesis. For Aristotle it is not a rule but the situation itself which seems to make the demand on someone to act in a specific way. And that means that everything depends on one’s ability to see the situation. Such seeing is not theoretical, precisely because to see what a situation calls for, is already to act.lS Although relatively undeveloped, Heidegger’s most striking innovation is his interest in the temporality of this seeing or aisthesis which is in concrete relation to the moment (Augenblick) (PI 259-60). Augenblick is Heidegger’s translation of the word kairos and had already played a major role in his reading of St. Paul in the 1920-21 lectures, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion.’g In the context of the Nicomachean Ethics, Heidegger found the word in Book I1 where Aristotle says of action that one must consider what is appropriate to the moment (tapros ton kairon skopein) (NE 1104a 9).20

If the discussion of the temporality of praxis is relatively undeveloped, there are parts of the analysis which, when read today, clearly evoke the discussion of the worldhood of the world in Being and Time. Recognition of the situation in which

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one finds oneself is already said to be governed by a referential structure defined by the whereof, the whereto, and the for- the-sake-of, although Heidegger’s word for this last is Weswegen and not yet Worumwillen. In this way it emerges that Heidegger’s analysis of the situation of interpretation parallels the account of the situation of action that he finds in Aristotle. Except in one decisive respect. Heidegger did not appear to want to emphasize that in the discussion of phronesis what is at issue is Dasein’s self-relatedness.

By the time Heidegger delivered his 1924-25 lectures directed to Plato’s Sophist, this had changed. In this lecture course Heidegger offered a more detailed study of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, as well as including a brief examination of theoria as discussed in Book X, and a far-ranging discussion of Sophia. The focus of the reading of the Ethics again fell on the interrelation of the five truth attaining dispositions of the soul. In particular, Heidegger provided an illuminating contrast between techne and phronesis. The principle of making is the eidos or idea in the mind of the maker, whereas the principle of action is the hou heneka (NE 1140b 21) or tha t for the sake of which the action is performed. Furthermore, the end of techne is some product, a thing which comes to have an independent existence, whereas the end of phronesis is not a knowledge of things, so much as a knowledge of human being. For the principle not to manifest itself in the situation means that the appropriate action is not provoked (NE 1140b 18). In remarks which seem to point clearly towards the distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic, Heidegger notes Aristotle’s observation that when one is corrupted by pleasure or by fear of pain, one lacks phronesis. Hence, Heidegger explains, insofar as pleasure belongs to the basic constitution of Dasein, phronesis is a task that must be seized in proairesis, that is to say, in resolve (Entschluss). In spite of everything Heidegger will later say in Being and Time to take the discussion of authenticity and inauthenticity out of the sphere of the ethical, these passages give further reason for doubting if this is possible, at least in respect of ethics in the Greek sense.

The greater detail of the Sophist lecture course makes it possible to situate Heidegger’s reading within the history of Aristotelian interpretation. I shall take up only one of the many important topics broached by Heidegger in this course. The tradition has divided over the question of the identity and number of the so-called intellectual or dianoetic excellences. The dominant view is that represented by Aquinas in his Commentary on the Ethics. He maintained that there

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were five intellectual virtues, corresponding to the list of dispositions capable of attaining truth.21 However, there is an ancient tradition which says that there are only two, phronesis and Sophia, corresponding to the division of the rational sou1.22 In 1852, a German scholar, Carl Prantl, again argued in favor of there being two, a conclusion resisted strongly by Zeller in Germany and Stewart in England.23 More recently, Gauthier and Jolifin their commentary suggest, with some exaggeration, that there is now a consensus in favor of two intellectual excellence^.^^ The question is important in this context insofar as Heidegger, from the start, sides with the doctrine that there are two intellectual excellences and allows it to frame his discussion. In this he seems to be following Prantl, even though the latter is not mentioned by name in the transcript of the Sophist lectures at my disposal.

That Sophia (NE 1141a 16) and phronesis (NE 1140b 25) are intellectual excellences is not in question. The question is what might be said about the other potential candidates, the two most important of which are episteme and techne.25 Prantl understands Aristotle to have explicitly denied that either is an excellence of itself. So, for example, he refers to the passage where Aristotle says that Sophia or wisdom is the most perfect mode of knowledge (NE 1114a 16-19).26 Similarly, that techne is not its own excellence appears to be clearly stated by Aristotle when he says that “there is an excellence of techne, but not of phronesis” (NE 1140b 21). This should be understood to mean that phronesis is already an excellence, whereas, by contrast, techne, not being an excellence, admits of degrees of success and failure.27 Indeed, Heidegger adds, it is because one can go astray in techne that it is not included by Aristotle alongside episteme, Sophia, phronesis and now as a disposition in which we attain truth and are never led into falsehood (NE 1141a 5-6).

Having identified Sophia as the excellence of episteme, the question nevertheless remains as to what the excellence of techne is. Given that at least initially both Prantl and Heidegger organize their discussion of Book Six around Aristotle’s division between the two parts of the rational soul, one might expect them to understand phronesis as the excellence of techne. This would follow Aristotle’s distinction between, on the one hand, the truth of theoretical or speculative thought, which he says is not concerned with praxis orpoiesis, and the truth of practical thought, on the other hand, where, when the logos is true, desire is right, and both are directed to the same object, desire pursues what the logos affirms (NE 1139a 25).28 Furthermore, Aristotle also indicates that poiesis

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and techne belong together insofar as they both deal with things which change. The question then is why Prantl and Heidegger do not leave this scheme intact when they take up Aristotle’s question of which hexis or disposition is the best and ask about the intellectual excellence of each part of the soul, especially given the fact that Aristotle raises the question in the context of his characterization of the attainment of truth as the function of the two parts of the soul (NE 1139b 12).

And yet Prantl and Heidegger agree that Sophia and not phronesis is the excellence of techne. The immediate evidence on which both rely is extremely suspect. They both appeal to a passage where Aristotle explicitly characterizes sophia as the arete of techne (NE 1141a 12).29 However, as Zeller had already pointed out some years before Heidegger delivered his lecture course, in the passage in question Aristotle seems to be recording the popular usage of the Greek words rather than defining his own position.30 To understand why Heidegger appeared to ignore the evidence on this point, it is necessary to examine the additional arguments he provided to support the view that Sophia and not phronesis is the excellence of techne.

Briefly, Heidegger appears to relate the question of the excellence of techne to the arche, the principle-in the sense of that out of which something is what it is-which governs the disclosure of beings. This seems to be supported by the way that Aristotle in his discussion of phronesis and Sophia is particularly concerned with questions concerning the arche. The arche of phronesis is the hou heneka. By contrast, the arche of techne is the eidos in the Although it does not appear to be explicit in the 1924-25 lecture course, I would suggest that it is this distinction which makes it possible for Heidegger to identify Sophia as the excellence of techne. The next question is that of why Heidegger finds it important to do so.

It is first necessary to understand that Heidegger is not divorcing techne from phronesis altogether, either in Being and Time or in his interpretation of Aristotle in the Sophist lectures. That Heidegger fully appreciates the intimacy of techne and phronesis can most readily be shown by juxtaposing a passage from the Nicomachean Ethics with a parallel passage from section 18 of Being and Time. The passage from Aristotle occurs early in Book Six, before the list of the five dispositions with which Heidegger begins his reading in the Sophist lectures, and belongs to a discussion of the nature of truth for that part of the soul which relates

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to action. More precisely, the context of the passage is a discussion of proairesis. Although proairesis is usually translated as “choice,” it should not be understood as a free choice between a number of different possibilities available to one at a given moment. It is a choosing ahead of time, a kind of prior orientation. Aristotle indicates this temporal dimension when in Book I11 he explains that the character of proairesis is indicated by the very word, which suggests that something is chosen before other things (NE 1112a 18. See also 1113a 4-8). It is in terms of proairesis that Aristotle indicates that making or poiesis is referred to action or praxis as an end in itself. This takes place in the following passage:

Thought alone moves nothing, but only thought for-thesake-of something and concerned with action. This indeed governs making also, since whoever makes something always has some further end in view: that which is made is not an end in itself, it is relative and for some further end. Whereas that which is done (to prakton) is an end in itself, since doing well (eupraxia) is the end, and what desire aims at. (NE 1139a 35b 4. My translation.)3*

The passage seems to return to issues raised in the First Book of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle asked about the way of life which best corresponds to what is good for human beings. The existential form of this question-soon evoked by Aristotle-is that of whether life is desirable at all. All desire would be futile and vain if everything was chosen for the sake of something else. If all activities had their end outside them, the result would be an infinite regress, an unending sequence of means and ends, in which each end becomes in turn the means for some further end. This infinite regress threatens to deprive human life of meaning. Aristotle is clear that the recognition of another class of activities, actions, which have their end in themselves is not of itself a solution. As he indicates on the opening pages of the Ethics, either kind of activity might be subordinated to the other so that either kind of end might in principle seem capable of governing the other.

This is the issue he returns to in Book Six in the passage I have just quoted. On my understanding of it, Aristotle is saying that the for-the-sake-of, which governs praxis and belongs to it, is also the principle of poiesis. In other words, only by referring poiesis to the for-the-sake-of as the principle of praxis can the infinite regress which threatens be halted. Only insofar as poiesis subordinates itself to the realm of praxis does it cease to be pointless or futile. To make the point graphically, when poiesis is referred to praxis, the relation of the agent to that for the sake of which his or her actions

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are to be performed, issues in what might best be described as a circular structure, rather than the extended line of an infinite regress. This was already indicated by Aristotle when he said, in the course of introducing proairesis in Book Three of the Nicomachean Ethics, that one stops inquiring how one should act once one has brought the arche of the action back to oneself. It is this principle which through the arche determines the way each situation appears to that person, the way it is perceived as offering opportunities for pursuing a course which in somewhat more general terms has already been decided upon, and as Aristotle himself specifies “what tools to use and how to use them” (NE 1112b 30). In other words, it is as if one’s proairesis approaches one from out of the situation in the course of acting in accord with it. In this context the reference of techne to phronesis, such that praxis could be said to govern poiesis, the practical said to be the principle of the productive, would amount to understanding techne as piloted by phronesis through the proairesis. Thus phronesis also becomes concerned with technical issues and with intermediary steps within the circle.

Heidegger does not, on the evidence of the transcript at my disposal, discuss this passage in his 1924-25 lectures or in the Introduction to the projected Aristotle book, although of course it may prove tha t he discussed it elsewhere. Nevertheless, if the reading I have proposed of this passage of Aristotle is accepted as in keeping with Heidegger’s general understanding of the Ethics, it would also seem to be in remarkable accord with the account of the worldhood of the word which Heidegger offers, apparently in his own name, in Being and Time. In his account of equipmentality in Being and Time Heidegger describes the relation we have with things, most notably things which have been produced as, for example, when we use or manipulate a hammer, perhaps in the process of making something else. Heidegger makes the point that in such cases, we do not see things just “theoretically.” Rather, in such dealings with equipment, there is a special kind of sight which reflect their subordination to the manifold assignments of the “in-order-to.” The word Heidegger uses in Being and Time to describe this sight is Umsicht (SZ 69), the same word he used to translatephronesis in the 1922 introduction and the 1924-25 lecture course. And as if to underline the connection, when Heidegger appeals in Being and Time to the notion of the for-the-sake-of-which (das Worumwillen), he is using the same word that he used in 1924-25 to translate Aristotle’s hou heneka.33 The for-the- sake-of-which is that wherein Dasein understands itself

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beforehand. It is that for which entities are freed, relating us to the horizon in which we are situated and on which entities may be encountered.

Of course, phronesis is only one of many elements in Heidegger’s account, an account which is in many respects quite alien to Aristotle’s enterprise in the Ethics. But if there is this echo or repetition of Aristotle at the heart of Heidegger’s account of the worldhood of the world, what is its significance? And why, if in Being and Time Heidegger retrieves the way phronesis governs techne in Aristotle, is he so intent in the 1924-25 lectures to run counter to the whole current of Aristotelian scholarship to claim that the excellence of techne is not phronesis but Sophia? To address these questions it is necessary to develop a better understanding of what Heidegger is attempting in Being and Time. Sections 15 to 18 of Being and Time are habitually read as Heidegger’s challenge to the priority that traditional ontology is supposed to have given to Vorhandenheit. That he attempts this is undeniable, but one fails to appreciate what this means if one ignores the fact that Heidegger employs the resources of the tradition to do so. And yet how are we to understand Heidegger’s juxtaposition of Aristotle’s account of phronesis with ontological claims which it contests but which nevertheless are also present in Aristotle? How does Heidegger organize this discourse within which Aristotle exceeds a tradition which he also represents? The sketch of an answer can be found in Heidegger’s well-known discussion of aletheia, which in many ways parallels that concerning phronesis. He writes, “We must not overlook the fact that while this way of understanding Being (the way which is closest to us) is one which the Greeks were the first to develop as a branch of knowledge and to master, the primordial understanding of truth was simultaneously alive among them, even if pre- ontologically, and it even held its own against the concealment implicit in their ontology-at least in Aristotle” (SZ 225). Heidegger’s claim would seem to be that Aristotle’s account of phronesis in the same way records an experience which Aristotle’s ontology does not reflect.

This would mean that there is still no resolution to Gadamer’s uncertainty as to whether Heidegger in his Marburg lectures on Aristotle “was speaking of his own concern or that of Aristotle.” Indeed, far from it being the case that, as Gadamer claims, recognition of Heidegger’s destructive purpose somehow resolves this uncertainty, it is essential to the destructive enterprise that the question of who owns the words remains open.

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Although I am arguing that it is important to recognize Aristotle in play in, for example, section 18 of Being and Tine, it nevertheless belongs to the nature of the destruction of the history of ontology that one cannot then proceed to portion out the text and decide at every moment whether it is Heidegger or Aristotle who “owns,” for example, a certain sentence about “the for-the-sake-of-which.” Or to put it another way, there is no single signatory to the text. Furthermore, what has just been said about Aristotle, can be extended to include many other thinkers from the tradition from-and the list is artificial-Parmenides and Plato, through Augustine and Luther to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. It might seem that the result is precisely a discourse which is not owned, a discourse for which nobody takes responsibility, an inauthentic (uneigentlich) discourse. One might even say, perhaps, an historiological discourse. But that impression must be balanced against the fact that what is at issue in the destruction is precisely “appropriation” (Aneignung) and that what is inauthentic is the adoption of categories and questions on the basis of their apparent self-evidence without any attempt being made to establish their originary character. By the same token, “originary” here is not to be confused with “originality,” which Heidegger denies is an issue. “Whether the answer is a ‘new’ one remains quite superficial and is of no importance. Its positive character must lie in its being ancient enough for us to learn to conceive the possibilities which the ‘Ancients’ have made ready for us” (SZ 19). Heidegger’s constant insistence that there is no such thing as “Heidegger’s philosophy” should be understood with reference to the destruction in this sense. As Heidegger acknowledged in his 1927 lecture course, the task is not so much the overcoming of ancient ontology as the explicit elaboration of its basis.34 The result is original to the extent that it recalls a previous origin.

On this basis I shall now return to the question asked earlier about why Heidegger apparently goes to such lengths to identify sophia as the excellence of techne. I would speculate that what underlies Heidegger’s insistence on this claim in the 1924-25 lectures is his desire to establish the special character of phronesis in relation to the analysis of Dasein. So long as techne and phronesis are both characterized-and this is clearly the dominant tendency in Aristotle-as concerned with things that are subject to change, what is important to Heidegger about phronesis is Dasein’s relation to itself, remains concealed. For Heidegger, phronesis, reinterpreted ontologically, prefigures the underlying

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condition of the metaphysics of Dasein such that “it belongs to the essence of Dasein that its own Being resides in its for- thesakeof” (GA 26,2401186).

In this context the provisional character of the analysis of Dasein to be found in the first part of Being and Time should not be forgotten. Heidegger draws attention to this when in Division Two of Part One he says that the seemingly obvious character of the preparatory analysis may completely disappear in the light of the temporal analysis (SZ 332 and 371). It would seem that far from sections 15 to 18 presenting analyses which we can take as representative of Heidegger’s philosophy, they exhibit once more the self-evidence of the tradition that it is the task of the destruction to question. This shows how far Heidegger is from being able to sign or underwrite with his own name the analysis of equipmentality which, whether it is praised or rejected, is almost invariably attributed without question to him in spite of his own insistence that it is only “preliminary.” If there is such a thing as Heidegger’s philosophy in Being and Time it lies less in what is said than in the strategies developed to renounce, or better disown, the discourse into which he is led.

This account of Heidegger’s reinscription of Aristotle in the early sections raises more questions than it resolves. If it shows anything at all, it shows how far we are from understanding what it means to read Being and Time as a destruction of the history of ontology. The reading of sections 15 to 18 of which I have given a brief outline needs to be continued into the Second Division. I would like to close with two or three indications of where this reading might lead. First, with respect to temporality. When Heidegger in contrast to the tradition emphasizes the primacy of the ecstasis of the future he is developing his account, already latent in the 1922 Introduction to Aristotle, of the temporality of phronesis. It is therefore no surprise to find in the 1928 lecture course, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, the preeminence of the future ecstasis is proposed in terms of the primacy of the Umwillen (GA 26,2731211). But this primacy Heidegger finds himself questioning as he proceeds in his lecture courses of 1927 and 1928 with the analyses that he had begun in Being and Time or did he already have an inkling of this when in chapters three and four of the Second Division he acknowledged that the seemingly obvious character of the preparatory analyses might completely disappear in the light of the temporal analysis (SZ 332 and 371)?

A second question is raised by Heidegger’s discussion of authenticity in the Second Division. I shall limit myself to

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commenting on the claim made by some commentators that the distinction between phronesis and techne corresponds to that between the two published divisions of Being and Time and so to the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity.35 This claim, which can only be sustained by disassociating the relations of Umsicht with phronesis and thus with praxis is challenged by the evidence presented in this essay. The temptation to correlate phronesis with authenticity is no doubt enhanced by the fact that, unlike techne, it is an excellence. But before taking this route, which would make Being and Time more about ethics than Heidegger would seem to allow, I would insist that the evidence of the 1922 and 1924-25 materials point rather towards Heidegger’s ontologizing of phronesis.36

Finally, and it returns us to the familiar framework of the opposition between the theoretical and the practical as it has tended to govern the reading of the early sections of Being and Time, how does Heidegger address the priority Aristotle gives to the bios theoretikos in Book Ten of the Nicomachean Ethics and indeed the privilege accorded to sophia over phronesis in Book Six? In the Sophist lectures Heidegger takes up the question textually. He acknowledges that there is a tendency to want to say that phronesis is the highest and most decisive disposition, higher than sophia, because in it one addresses one’s existence as Dasein. But even in spite of this comment, which serves as confirmation of the sense in which phronesis was for Heidegger a clue to the possibility of the analysis of Dasein, in his reading of Book Six he reaffirms that sophia as theorein is a way of being in which the human being attains the highest possibility of existence: living in contemplation. How does Heidegger respond to these texts which run counter to the tendency of Being and Time, or at least to the dominant reading of Being and Time? Is it to set Aristotle up as an opponent to be subjected to criticism?

Heidegger first of all examines the passage in which Aristotle himself entertains the possibility that phronesis is not ruled over by sophia because the former produces the latter (NE 1143b 35). But Aristotle challenges this appearance with an analogy. Just as medicine does not govern health, but is for the sake of health (NE 1145a l l ) , phronesis is for the sake of sophia. At this point Heidegger comments “Human Dasein is authentic, if it ever is, to the extent that it can be in its highest possibility, that is, if it dwells long and continuously in contemplation of the permanent. Insofar as human beings are mortal, constant dwelling in that which is always-in-being is denied them.” Heidegger does not make clear whether he

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believes Aristotle fully appreciated this or understands this as an obligation to Aristotle, but it would seem that Heidegger is accepting the argument (from Pindar among others) that a mortal should have mortal thoughts, in spite of the fact that Aristotle specifically rejects it (NE 1177b 33). What is striking, if the transcript of the lecture course is an accurate report of Heidegger’s treatment of the subject, is the economy with which he uses Aristotle against Aristotle. Everything rests on the phrase “insofar as human beings are mortal.”

In this context, one further point should be made for clarification. Heidegger does not reverse the traditional subjection of the practical to the theoretical, he simply insists on the fact that the theoretical life is, as a life to be lived, itself a practical life. In saying this he does not depart from Aristotle. It is the guardians of the tradition who have set up the opposition between them and it is the opposition which is to be subjected to criticism through the destruction.

If recognition of the destruction of the history of ontology leads one to pause in the face of the claim that “Heidegger is the author of Being and Time,” it is a doubt which quickly spreads to other philosophical texts. It is true that other philosophers claim authorship to their texts in a way which Heidegger does not insofar as he explicitly recognizes himself as engaged in the task of destruction. But it is not only in the later period that Heidegger would have us believe that thinkers write under dictation. Already according to Being and Time one is always under the sway of one’s predecessors and one is, without much exaggeration, destined simply to repeat them unwittingly if one does not repeat the tradition in the special Heideggerian sense of the Wiederholung. To be prey to the tradition is, Heidegger explicitly says, every bit as much a Verfdenhezt as interpreting oneself in terms of the world (SZ 21). The account of the worldhood of the world in section 18 is to this extent doubly preliminary. The analysis of environmentality from within the horizon of average everydayness might appear to have phenomenological warrant, but risks remaining imprisoned within traditional ontology even in its counter-orientation. That is why the portion of Being and Time available to us should be read as already participating in the destruction of the history of ontology. But that does not mean distancing oneself from that history so much as appropriating it. After Aristotle, we in the West are all Aristotelians, just as we are also Platonists, Thomists, and Lutherans. To that extent, the study of Aristotle, and indeed of all the other major figures particularly of Greek thought, is not understood by Heidegger

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at this stage as an encounter with what is alien, but with what is closest to us, notwithstanding the historical gulf that separates us.

NOTES

M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1967, p. 65. Henceforth SZ. The English translation gives the German page numbers in the margin. Translation by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Being and Time, Oxford Basil Blackwell, 1967.

2 See M. Heidegger, ‘Vom Wesen des Grundes’, Wegmarken, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967, pp. 38% trans. T. Malick, The Essence of Reasons, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969, pp. 47ff.

3 Of course, Heidegger later abandoned the model of destruction in favor of the history of Being in which this reference to originary experience disappeared.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophische Lehrjahre, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977, p. 216; trans. R. Sullivan, Philosophical Apprenticeships, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985, p. 49.

5 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Die Marburger Theologie’, Neuere Philosophie I, Gesammelte Werke 3, Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987, p. 199; trans. David E. Linge, ‘Heidegger and Marburg Theology’, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, p. 20.

6 R. Bernasconi, ‘The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiesis’, Heidegger Studies 2, 1986, pp. 111-139. J. Taminiaux, ‘Phenomenology and the Problem of Action’, Philosophy and Social Criticism 11, 1986, pp. 207- 219; ‘Poiesis and Praxis in Fundamental Ontology’, Research in Phenomenology 17, 1987, pp. 137-169; ‘Poiesis et Praxis dans l’articulation de l’ontologie fondamentale’, Heidegger et l’id6e de la pht?nombmlogie, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1988, pp. 107-125. F. Volpi, Heidegger e Aristotele Padua: Daphne Editrice, 1984, pp. 90-1 16; ‘Dasein comme praxis’: L’assimilation et la radicalisation heideggerienne de la philosophie pratique d‘Aristote’, Heidegger et l’id6e de la phbnomt!nologie pp. 1-41. R. Schurmann, La principe d’anarchie, Paris: Seuil, 1982, pp. 116-25; trans. C.-M. Gros, Heidegger on Being and Acting, Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 98-105. T. Sheehan, ‘Heidegger’s Philosophy of Mind’, Contemporary Philosophy. A new survey. Vol. 4, ed. G. Floistad, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1983, pp. 287-318, esp. p. 299. W. Brogan, ‘Heidegger and Aristotle: Dasein and the Question of Practical Life’ and D. Schmidt, ‘Economies of Production: Heidegger and Aristotle on Poiesis’ (both to appear in Crises in Continental Philosophy ed. A. Dallery and C. Scott, Albany, SUNY Press, 1990 forthcoming). John van Buren, ‘The Young Heidegger, Aristotle and Practical Philosophy’, paper delivered at SPEP, Pittsburgh, October 1989. See also the papers cited in note 15.

7 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. See J. Taminiaux, ‘Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?’ gtudes Pht?nomt?nologiques 2, 1985, pp. 111-136 and ‘Heidegger et Arendt lecteurs d’Aristote’ Les Cahiers de Philosophie 4, automne 1987, pp. 41-52.

8 J. Caputo makes the case for Verstehen in Radical Hermeneutics, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987, p. 109. The case for Gewissen is supported by the anecdotal evidence of Gadamer and Oskar Becker. See Gadamer, ‘Die Marburger Theologie’ p. 200; trans. ‘Heidegger and Marburg Theology’ p. 201, and 0. Poggeler ‘Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage’, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, Pfullingen: Neske, 1983, p. 352; trans. D. Magurshak and S. Barber, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1987, p. 285. For phronesis as

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Entschlossenheit see, for example, Taminiaux, ‘Praxis and Poiesis in Fundamental Ontology’, pp. 147, 152, and 166-67. The argument in favor of Unsicht is made below, but this should not be understood to mean that I advocate it as the sole solution. My point here is not to try to limit Heidegger’s reinscription of phronesis to a single moment in Being and Time, but rather to indicate some of the complications that arise for the standard reading of that book once it is recognized to be an essay in the destruction of the history of ontology, (which, of course, means not just a destruction of Aristotle) .

9 Another example of a disagreement on the question of how to read Heidegger’s reinscription of Aristotle can be found in the way Taminiaux referspoiesis to Vorhandenheit ‘Praxis and Poiesis in Fundamental Ontology’ pp. 145-46, whereas Franco Volpi presents Vorhandenheit, Zuhandenheit and Dasein as corresponding to theoria, poiesis and praxis respectively. See ‘Dasein comme praxis’ p. 15.

10 I am especially grateful to Walter Brogan who in his commentary on my paper specified some of the difficulties that need to be addressed. I should in fairness also add a personal note of apology to him that, because the full text of Heidegger’s Introduction to the Aristotle book only became available to me after theconference, the published paper cames more revisions from the delivered version than is usual.

11 It is announced as Platon: Sophistes Gesamtausgabe 19, hrsg. I. Schiissler. 12 It would appear that some scholars have, like myself, made use of an

incomplete and sometimes illegible typescript of Helene Weiss’s notes, whereas others have had access to Simon Moser’s transcript of the lectures. It seems far-fetched to suggest that the quite large differences in interpretation can be explained by differences between the two sets of notes. However, in spite of these difficulties and the need for caution in its use, it would be irresponsible not to include a discussion of the lecture course. I shall here attempt to take up only one or two of the issues it raises.

13 Heidegger also gave a lecture to the Kant-Gesellschaft in Cologne in December 1924 under the title Wahrheit und Duein. Aristoteles, Ethica Nicomachea Z. On the question of the date of the lecture see T. Kisiel, “Why the First Draft of Being and Time was never published,” Journalof the British Society for Phenomenology, 20, 1, 1989, pp. 3-22, esp. 12 and 21. The text of the lecture will eventually be published in the third division of the Gesamtausgabe, but I am not aware of any plans to publish it in the near future.

l4 See T. Kisiel, ‘The Missing Link in the Early Heidegger’, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, ed. J. Kockelmans, Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1988, pp. 1-40.

l5 M. Heidegger, ‘Phiinomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation)’ hrsg. Hans-Ulrich Lessing, Dilthey Jahrbuch 6, 1989, pp. 235-274. Henceforth PI. Information about this text only came to me slowly and in small portions. The full text was published only a few days before the publication deadline for this essay and I have done what I can in the small time available to me to rewrite my remarks, giving greater centrality to this extraordinary text, not just because of its unquestioned importance, but also on the scholarly grounds that it is more reliable than the notes of the 1924-25 lecture course available to me. In my efforts to come to terms with the text I have been greatly helped by two unpublished essays: Rudolf Makkreel’s “The Genesis of Heidegger’s Phenomenological Hermeneutics and the Rediscovered ‘Aristotle Introduction’ of 1922” (Man and World, forthcoming) and Ted Kisiel’s “What did Heidegger find in Aristotle?”

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16 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics with an English translation by H. J. Rackham and Loeb Classics, London: Heinemann, 1139b 15. Henceforth NE.

17 See H.-G. Gadamer, Hermeneutik I. Wahrheit und Methode, Gesammelte Werke I, Ttibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1985, pp. 317-329; trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, Truth and Method, second revised edition, New York: Crossroad, 1989, pp. 312-324.

18 One does not, in my view, find in Aristotle’s account any place for an act of will. Rather, by seeing what the situation demands, the phronimos has already made something of it. It is this intimacy of the capacity for praxis and the capacity to sum up a situation which identifies thephronimos. Anything else is puzzling and calls for explanation. Hence the discussion of akrasia where one is confronted with someone who-unlike thephronimos- can see what is required, but who does not do it. Note, however, that Heidegger does locate the will in Aristotle, specifically as oreris in De Anima. See Nietzsche Band I, Pfullingen: Neske, 1961, p. 67; trans. D. F. Krell, Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979, p. 55.

19 See T. Sheehan, ‘Heidegger’s “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion” 1920-21’, The Personalist, July 1979, pp. 321-22.

2O Heidegger does not point out that Aristotle says that this is also true of techne.

21 Aquinas, Zn Decem Libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, ed. R. M. Spazzi, Torino: Marietti, 1964, p. 314; trans. C. I. Litzinger, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964, p. 553.

22 Plutarch, Moralia vol. VI, Loeb Classics, London: Heinemann, 1962,4433, p. 36.

23 Carl Prantl, ‘Uber die dianoetischen Tugenden in der Nikomachischen Ethik’ Munich: Christian Kaiser, 1852, pp. 1-19. E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen third edition, Leipzig: 1879, 11, 2, p. 649, n. 2; trans. B. F. C. Costelloe and J.H. Muirhead, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics vol. 2, New York Russell and Russell, 1962, p. 179 n. 2. J. A. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892, pp.

2‘ R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, L’Ethique a Nicomague. Tome 11. Commentaire. Louvain: Publications Universitaires and Paris: B6atrice- Nauwelaerts, 1970, p. 452.

25 Aristotle explicitly refers to sunesis as an intellectual excellence at the end of Book One (NE 1103a 6). Heidegger does not appear to discuss this passage, but Prantl comments that sunesis, like euboulia, gnome and deinotes, should be understood as intellectual virtues within the realm of phronesis (Prantl, pp. 10 and 16), that is to say, as modifications of phronesis (p. 19). Prantl quickly dismisses the possibility that nous is an intellectual virtue (P. 10).

26 Prantl, pp. 12-13. Z7 That is also why there is no place in phronesis for experimentation,

whereas in techne one discovers something new only when one risks going wrong (NE 1140b 21-25).

28 L. H. G. Greenwood, Aristotle. Nicornachean Ethics. Book Six, New York: Arno Press, 1973, pp. 175-76.

29 Prantl, p. 14. 30 Eduard Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics vol. ii, trans. B.

F. C. Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead, New York, Russell and Russell, 1962, p. 179.

31 Heidegger clarifies the relation of episteme poietike to the eidos in his 1931 lecture course on Aristotle. Aristoteles. Metaphysik ZX, GA 33, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981, pp. 136ff.

32-33.

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32 For further discussion of this passage, see R. Bernasconi, ‘Technology and the Ethics of Praxis’ Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae (Tokyo), vol. 5, 1987, pp. 93-108. In ‘The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiesis’ I suggested that this passage from Aristotle also marks the point where the esoteric distinction between praxis and poiesis is ontologized by Aristotle by coming under the sway of a teleological model, which Heidegger seems to challenge in subsequent works, but only rarely. The present essay should be understood in terms of the broader framework provided by this earlier article.

33 I am not suggesting that in Being and Time das Worumwillen refers solely to Aristotle’s hou heneka. Heidegger uses the phrase for-the-sake-of- which also in his discussion of Kant’s account of the end in itself, as well as to elucidate the hou heneka as it occurs in Plato’s discussion of the good

’ in the Sixth Book of the Republic: Metaphysische Anfangsgrffnde der h g i k Gesamtausgabe 26, Frankfurt: Klosterrnann, 1978, pp. 137,237 and 240; trans. M. Heim. Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 111,184 and 186. Henceforth GA 26.

34 Die Grundprobleme der Phbinomenologie, Gesamtausgabe 24, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975, pp. 156-57; trans. A. Hofstadter, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982, p. 111.

35 For example, Taminiaux, ‘Poiesis and Praxis in Fundamental Ontology’, p. 140. However, in the published version of this paper, originally delivered as a lecture at Essex University, Taminiaux included reference to NE 1139a 35-64 and specifically related the hou heneka to Heidegger’s Worumwillen which seems to draw phronesis into section 18 of Being and Time, precisely where according to the original thesis it does not belong.

36 Gadamer makes a similar point about the Introduction to the projected Aristotle book in his prefactory remarks on its publication. ‘Heidegger’s “theologische” Jugendschrift’ DiltheyJahrbuch 6,1989, p. 233.

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