(19) Blogging Through Prof Martin Heidegger’s Interpretations of Greek Philosophy (Heraclitus Part 6)

“What are you gaping at, you scoundrels? Or is it not better to do this [Play with kids] than to work with you on behalf of the πόλις [city-state]?” (Heraclitus)

The above statement reflects Heraclitus’s disdain for current affairs political involvement and his preference for philosophical contemplation or simpler, perhaps more authentic, pursuits like playing with children. Last time we looked at the difference between conventional thinking and philosophical thinking where conventional thinking reduces everything the level of “one” so “one” thinks this or that, is arbiter (Will to Power in Nietzsche’s language) of a world that has been dumbed down to the short, quick, and simplistic.  For example, in law we have jury trials where we randomly poll 12 non-experts to make complex legal decisions.  It’s the same as if you polled 12 non-mechanics on the street about how to fix your car, or holding a popularity contest among people with no expertise in political science to elect a government.  Academics debate in front of an audience of laypeople as though their opinion on who won the debate matters. One proceeds as arbiter by searching out contradictions, since thinking is thus avoiding contradictions, and so thinking reduces to naming fallacies (e.g., ad hominem; straw man) and humor becomes randomness and sarcasm (e.g., John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher).  Liberal and Conservative politicians have different sets of analogies to support and illustrate mutually exclusive arguments (e.g., pro life vs pro choice) – and yet each thinks her analogy wins the day. 

Nietzsche blamed Christianity in particular, calling it Platonism for the people.  Descartes adopted Luther’s interpretation of Truth as certainty, free from doubt, because what had the be free from doubt was the salvation of the soul. The whole Christian religion through the apostle Paul was reduced to one easily understandable and digestible point: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe/trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).”  This contrasts sharply with the historical Jesus who taught the rich young man that he needed to keep the biblical Law and sell everything and give the money to the poor.  When one’s basic stance toward the world/disposition is securing against doubt, this breeds anxiety that disseminate to all parts of your life for the same reason diets can be counterproductive because you are thinking about food all the time, or going to AA meetings to quit drinking because it keeps alcohol at the forefront of your thinking.

The fundamental Logos is taking-as, which we noted is shown when the process “breaks down” and I mis-take the rustling dead leaves in the wind at my feet as a living thing.  As Aristotle notes, metaphysical thinking starts with the logos apophantikos: something ‘as’ something (else), the dog as brown, and so the subject is to be reconciled with the predicate to create truth as correctness (as opposed to “true” friend or the great “truths” of the human condition which don’t have to do with correctness).  This structure has as its basic principle as non-contradiction, which Aristotle described that something can’t both be and not be, at the same time and in the same way: that thinking is defective if the predicate being thought doesn’t fit with the subject.  Kant modified this principle taking out Aristotle’s language about “at the same time” since tautologies like “All bachelors are unmarried” just restate the subject with the predicate and so “time” is not involved.  For conventional thinking, contradictory predicates can only be successive, not simultaneous.  Heraclitus, by contrast, thinks the simultaneity of emerging and concealing with the participle, which is at the same time substantive and verbal.  We started by looking at Anaximander speaking of beings in their unity, as we did with Parmenides and as we’re doing with Heraclitus. 

From Heraclitus we have the statement physis kryptesthai philei, which we usually interpret as the essence of things loves to hide.  But this is thinking Heraclitus as kind of an Ur-metaphysician.  Phusis is what is “to be thought.”  What is intended here is the simplicity of all that is (98), the question-worthy: “Relationality unfolds, and not some thing or condition (101).”  With conventional thinking we represent objects, the thought of the house corresponds with the object, and this allows us to orient ourselves amongst things, affairs, and situations.  Physis can’t be represented that way.  We think if the matter can’t be understood by everyone, it’s convoluted.  Natural thinking gets offended by the complicated, wanting the simple.  This is why Ikea cabinets have instruction manuals and video games have clue books. It’s frustrating to try to figure things out for yourself. That’s why the cover of a puzzle box has a completed picture. There is another kind of thinking, another path aside from the common way of thinking that (the common way)”conceives of things only objectively and places everything into individualized conceptions and categories and files them, as if into boxes (103).” 

There can be no emerging except out of concealing, the seed can’t emerge but out of the concealment of the earth, beneath which some of it must remain, “Emerging does not unfold as what it is if it does not beforehand and always remain retained and secured in a self-concealing.”  The spring depends on the flowing concealed underground water for its being a spring.  Being is imperceptible, and so a painter could not paint if he didn’t have the image on the paper already before his mind’s eye.  Words are engaged in a “play,” in themselves, self-arising and self-playing wordplay, as with the simultaneous substantive and verbal participle (104).  Plato notes it’s difficult to see the essence of things.  However, physis doesn’t hide, but rather hides from the eyes of humans in their distractibility (105) and proclivity to interject their opinions.  In this way Plato’s allegory (sense image) of the cave is the image of a journey, and so excludes normal thinking.  Conventional understanding which has created itself collides with the inclination of physis not to hide itself, precisely because Heraclitus’s word physis kryptesthai philei doesn’t mean the essence of things loves to hide, but means the opposite!  Physis is the pure and simple emerging of the unity of beings, like the emerging of the circling eagle which dissipates into the background as Nature steps forward incarnate. In this way, the masses as arbiters of life are so caught up in gathering info and improving in content areas and evaluating experiences that they don’t see the simple one or whole that these are all just various ways they are killing time.  I imagine the tragic individual assessing the oppressed person thinking “at least this one has a cause and purpose.”