(12) Blogging Through Prof Martin Heidegger’s Interpretations of Greek Philosophy (Parmenides Part 3)

Parmenides said “for the same is apprehending as well as Being.”  Apprehending is a translation of the Greek word noein, to “take” into sight (to look it over or “take” it into consideration).  We operate in this while not normally seeing it as conspicuous, but as I said this is outlined when it breaks down.  For example, when I try to “take” movement “as” fractional, it breaks down.  In order to travel a distance, I must first make it halfway.  But, to make it to that middle I must first make it halfway to that middle, and so on to infinity.  This paradox where the sameness of apprehending and Being breaks down shows us the normal state of human comportment is apprehending and Being are the same. 

I talked previously how our basic stance toward the world is “taking-as.”  We don’t see this directly, but it is made conspicuous when the process breaks down.  Heidegger gives the example in at least 2 lecture courses including this one of how I hear a living  thing at my feet, only to look down and see I “mis-took” rustling dead leaves in the wind “as” a living thing.  So, we “take” beings as they “are,” in their Being (living thing-hood) and the deeper we penetrate into beings we discover not the individual but Being: einai Being, choris, separate from, ton allown, the others, and kath auto, in itself.  I “encounter” the dog “as” not me, for instance.  In everyday life I take a sound as a violin playing, not just an empty sound by itself.

Now, Parmenides is looking at the question of Being and what it has to do with Truth.  As I said, the average, everyday stance toward beings implies an understanding of Being.  This is also the case with truth.  When I address something in subject (you are talking about something) predicate (you say something about the subject) form, “the dog is brown,” truth as correctness is always implied and so “the dog is brown” always also means “It is true that the dog is brown.”

We noted previously how tragic restlessness governed the Greek relation to beings.  Humans are generally in the world of becoming where things come to be and pass away.  Humans are enticed and captivated by what they spontaneously pursue and cling to.  Humans hopelessly try to compel Being onto the everyday, but things just continuously come to be and pass away.  Puppy love fades.  Heidegger comments about everyday life:

“That humans are ‘unknowledgeable’ does not mean they have absolutely no cognition: on the contrary, in the end they know too much about too many things… Their taking in and taking away, their entire apprehension, is now like this, now like that, proceeding to and fro, without direction … errantly they take in and apprehend!  Each runs after the other, each always follows the others, and no on actually knows why… they are carried and cast to and fro, their words commandeered by the wind and waves that randomly toss things about (phorountai)… The diverse manifold they stumble across in this more or less satisfying frenzy enthralls them, surprises them, tempts them from one thing to another-but they remain with any one thing only for a fleeting moment, and then they bounce to something else, for they lack the sight of the essence and Being of things.  Therefore, these humans cannot be detained by anything, and they cannot attain the tranquility persistent restraint of wonder, the constancy of meditation, or the keen air of steadfast questioning.  On the contrary, all that remains for them is erratic surprise and desultory bewilderment – they merely find things “interesting (Heidegger, 95-6).”

A different kind of “Truth” is also the case on the philosophical path.  This path involves a dis-closive questioning (truth as un-covering, hodoi dizesis, Heidegger 88) that aims at what is ownmost (e.g., the great “truths” of the human condition) such as what is exemplary (e.g., being a true friend).” 

With Being there is no “emergence, disappearance, trembling, production, temporal change.  In short: without any to and fro, from – to, without any passage from one thing to another, without transition, i.e., without becoming.  These negations exclude from Being all becoming.  Being is grasped in pure and very sharp opposition to becoming (Heidegger 111).”  The goddess Truth (Aletheia) is thought in opposition of the trembling and oscillating of humans.  Being is without tremein, without trembling that constitutes the world (Homer, Iliad, XIII, 19).  The goddess is atremes hetor untrembling/self resting. 

Being is wholeness, unity.  We previously gave the example from Anne of Green Gables.  Anne started off the book mad at God because beings were out of joint because God gave her red hair and made her an orphan, but by the end of the book God was in his heaven and all was right with the world, unity, because her hair had turned auburn and she found a home and family at Green Gables: everything had fallen into place.  This is not theology, for an atheist knows what it means for things to be out of sorts but then fall into place.  Unity is also a feature of beings and so if I tear a sock, the previously present yet invisible unity is made conspicuous precisely “as” a lost-unity.  En, the neuter form of eis, mia: “One,” stands in opposition to all multiplicity and variety.  If I am learning about justice, I am not inventing something new, but ever more closely un-covering what justice is and always was though I didn’t see it fully before.  A prime example of this is revising the traditional definition of marriage because it does violence to LGBTQ+ rights.  Beings understood “as,” in respect to their Being, reflect the “one,” reflects firstness, sameness, simplicity, uniqueness and wholeness.  This is in contrast to the everyday path where Becoming signifies precisely change, now this now otherwise.  Becoming is emergence and disappearance, the to and fro of life, the march of production, formerly this, in the future that.  Depending on the path of truth you choose, Being “signifies,” either the “one” or the transitory of becoming.  The path of philosophy is always a turning away from the path of becoming because we are not gods or beasts who Aristotle says purely delight in solitude.  It is always a choice for us.

The path of Being aims at what is “comprehensive,” embraces everything.  “Philosophy is such comprehensive questioning because it asks the question of Being and only that question (Heidegger, 116).”  Philosophy is driving at Being and it “dis-closively” questions.  I ask “what is a being as such,” in its Being.  This way of questions opens up a clearing for viewing a beings, most notably in terms that it is, what it is, and how it is.  In questioning how a being is, we see the being is present-at-hand if it is in question (myself being in a questioning disposition or in dispute with someone else) whether the table is green or not and so we appeal to the being right here and now.  A disposition of questioning un-covers (truth) the entity in its dimensions so it can stand forth “as” what it is.