(20) Blogging Through Prof Martin Heidegger’s Interpretations of Greek Philosophy (Heraclitus Part 7)
The modern human is fascinated by this technological monstrosity of brightness; when it becomes too much, he uses the mountains or the sea as a palliative; he then ‘experiences’ ‘nature’ an experience that certainly can become boring already on the first morning of the trip, whereupon he just goes to the movies. Ah, the totality of what is called ‘life’! (108).
I wrote previously we go beyond the subject/object dichotomy in moods, such as the boring book. An exemplary case of this is love. In normal subject/predicate thinking we say “The boy (subject) loves the girl (predicate). We talk about something (subject) and say something about it (predicate). Thinking unifies the loving with the beloved. However, moods are exemplary in this sense of a union of inner and outer, and so for instance in David Copperfield Dickens writes: “I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else … it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wildflowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud (Dickens, 2004, ch 33 Blissful).” Heidegger says
“The Roman word res designates that which concerns somebody, … that which is pertinent, which has a bearing … In Engsh ‘thing’ has still preserved the full semantic power of the Roman word: ‘He knows his things,’ he understands the matters that have a bearing on him … The Roman word res denotes what pertains to man, concerns him and his interests in any way or manner. That which concerns man is what is real in res … Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an expression of Dionysius the Areopagite: love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves (PLT, T, 175-6).”
But this is only half the story. Let’s complete the thought.
The above describes love, eros, like in the word erotic. But there are other ways to look at love, such as philia, friendship, such as in the word Philadelphia (city of brotherly love) and philosophy (friend to wisdom). Heraclitus notes physis kryptesthai philei, which is usually translated as the essence of things likes to hide, wrongly imports post-Platonic metaphysic into the translation.
Friendship was an important topic in ancient Greek philosophy. Socrates always had a friend “daemon” with him which was basically a divine entity that would only warn or dissuade Socrates from particular courses of action. It never compelled him to do something; instead, it advised against actions that might lead to undesirable outcomes. Aristotle said In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Book VIII and IX, Aristotle categorizes friendship into three types:
Friendship of Utility: Friends for what they can get out of each other (e.g., business partners).
Friendship of Pleasure: Friends because they find each other enjoyable or pleasurable to be around (e.g., friends for leisure activities).
Friendship of the Good (or Virtue): The highest form of friendship, based on mutual admiration for each other’s virtues and character. This type is rare, long-lasting, and involves a deep, reciprocal care for the other’s well-being.
Philosophy is friendship of the to-be-thought, and what is to-be thought is the One (Fragment 32). There is jointure (harmonia) where the emerging is joined to the self-concealing and the self-concealing to the emerging. Phusis is like space and time, a soft light we see, though are primarily focused on what is in space and time.
There is difference and irreconcilability between conventional thinking and essential thinking. Essential thinking is too simple for conventional thinking (113). Conventional thinking conceives beings, while essential thinking thinks being.
We used the example before of having the traditional definition of marriage as a guiding perspective, but that it gets deemed an imposter by LGBTQ+ rights and so has to be deconstructed and reconstructed in a more inclusive, less violent way. Metaphysics question exclusively from the perspective of beings. However, if we consider from the point of view of being, there is another kind of questioning.
We gave the example above of Love in Dicken’s David Copperfield. But love is precisely hidden from the one lost in love. He is too close to the relationship to have perspective, like we said previously in reverse that the Philosopher can see the forest despite the trees because he is a step back from life and has perspective. A boy “sees” in the relationship but doesn’t “see as.” What is crystal clear to the couple’s friends is that the relationship in its simple one-ness is dysfunctional (perhaps she uses him for money and a ride). The boy only sees from his perspective of being caught-up-in (I love the girl), and so doesn’t see what the friends see: an unhealthy relationship. We can now see Heraclitus’ critique of polis (city-state service), the stupidity of the people caught in an endless cycle of seeking glory/honor only to have it fade and to start all over again. With this analogy we can see the difference between conventional thinking that thinks beings and essential thinking that thinks the simple, the One (not the boy or girl in isolation but the relationship as such “as” healthy or dysfunctional).
For example, in the Symposium Plato purposely forces the figure of Alcibiades (the paradigm of beauty and excellence in a Greek Person) between Socrates, the Philosopher, and Agathon, the good (man), in order to put into question the relationship between the philosopher and the good. We said before the good is what accuses an idea of being an imposter, such as LGBTQ+ rights accusing the holy and righteous traditional definition of marriage of violence – and so deconstructing and reconstructing it in a more inclusive way. After Socrates finishes giving his speech on love, Alcibiades jumps up and shouts at the audience to not to listen to Socrates because he has been deceiving them. Plato writes that “I hope you didn’t believe a single word Socrates said: the truth is just the opposite! He’s the one who will most surely beat me up if I dare praise anyone else in his presence – even a god!’ ‘Hold your tung! Socrates said. ‘By god, don’t you dare deny it!’ Alcibiades shouted. ‘I would never – never praise anyone else with you around’ (2 14d).” We see then the love between Socrates and Alcibiades is in fact a toxic relationship