(6) Blogging Through Prof Martin Heidegger’s Interpretations of Greek Philosophy (Anaximander Part 4)

  • The fragment of Anaximander presents one of the strongest hermeneutic challenges known to modem philology and philosophy.”  (Prof Vassilis Lambropoulos: Stumbling.over the ‘Boundary Stone of Greek Philosophy’ Two Centuries-of Translating the Anaximander Fragment)
  • In The Anaximander Fragment in Nietzsche’s translation (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks) is quoted:

Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away according to necessity; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.

  • Then Hermann Diel’s (Fragments of the Presocratics),

But where things have their origin, there too their passing away occurs according to necessity; for they pay recompense and penalty to one another for their recklessness, according to firmly established time.

  • In the essay in Off The Beaten Track, Heidegger narrows his study to only a part of the fragment he considers authentically Anaximander

…along the lines of usage; for they let order and thereby also reck belong to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder.

  • In Basic Concepts, Heidegger translates the fragment as follows:

Whence emergence is for what respectively presences also an eluding into this (as into the Same), emerges accordingly the compelling need; there is namely what presences itself (from itself), the fit, and each is respected (acknowledged) by the other, (all of this) from overcoming the unfit according to the allotment of temporalizing time.

  • Kenneth Maly, in his essay Reading and Thinking, translates Heidegger’s German as:

The place from out of which emergence comes is, for everything that emerges, also the place of disappearance into this (as into the same)–in accordance with exigence (brook); for they let enjoining and thereby also reck belong to each other (in the getting over) of disjoining, responding to the directive of time’s coming into its own.

The final part of the statement is kata ten tou chronou taxin, according to the measure of time.  We might say all things and processes elapse in time and time is the universal order (taxis) of the sequence of positions which pertain to every event.  But this is a modern way of thinking, not an ancient Greek one.  This is time as it presents itself in the calculative investigation of nature in physics.  Heidegger says “time is understood here purely and simply with respect to the sequence of natural processes in the sense of their succession according to antecedent and consequent, cause and effect… We see however that Anaximander asks not at all about a determinate region of beings as nature [as opposed to mental entities], but beings as a whole and understands beings not at all primarily as development , as causal generation and degeneration, but as stepping forth and  receding, as we said: appearance (13-14).”

So for example, when a being steps forth such as when a child gets a new toy and it becomes her world, this happens according to the allotment of time, and so time is the vehicle of the luster and eventually the luster of the teddy bear fades from the child’s eye and it recedes back into anonymity as just another abandonment in the collection of beings that constitutes the child’s world.   The issue is not that appearances recede in time, but it is time that governs the receding (Sophocles, Ajax, 646-47).  This designates the Being of beings, physis, that by which beings live and thrive. 

The early Greek thinkers were not natural scientists asking about nature, but about phusis.  Today we mean by “nature” the natural world, or the nature or essence or whatness of something, but back then it meant not “essence” or “what” but “how” or “manner.”  We say, for example the book is dragging on if you find it boring, which does not refer to what the book is but the manner in which it is appearing or presenting itself to you according to a dragging out of time (Langeweile).  Sophocles says time kruptetai, it conceals what was manifest and brings into appearance (fuei, grows) the concealed.  Physis does not mean growth as a causal succession of states and properties.  Physis is emergence from concealment, like a plant emerging from out of its seed in the earth.  Chronos phuei, time lets concealed things emerge.  Heraclitus says physis kryptesthai philei, appearing beings “strive toward concealment.”  Sophocles calls time anarithmetos, outside the realm of calculation.  As Aristotle said, time is eminently countable in boredom as a stretching out of time, but thereby it is with things but also in the mind so if there is no witness of the stretching out of time in boredom there is no time.

The light that the Greeks are concerned with is precisely not that which is visible in the sense of being seen by anyone, for the masses do not see it at all, but rather a fleeting radiance, a glory. Fink comments on Heraclitus fragment 29 that the noble minded prefer one thing rather than all else, namely “everlasting glory” rather than transient things. The comportment of the noble minded is opposed to that of the polloi, the many [people], who lie there like well-fed cattle … But the fragment expresses not only comportment of the noble minded in reference to glory. Glory is standing in radiance. Radiance, however, reminds us of the light of lightning and fire. Glory relates itself to all other things as radiance to dullness. Fr. 90 also belongs here in so far as it speaks of the relationship of gold to goods. Gold also relates itself to goods as radiance to dullness (Heidegger, HS, 22-3).” Radiant presence for the Greeks is what is opposed to the ordinary in the sense of dull, namely, presence is the uncanny, and for the Greeks the most uncanny is to deinon (cf Heidegger, PR, 82). Hence, for the Greeks, it is not so much a question of physical light which lights up the panta (beings as a whole), but a lustrous radiance. Even the ordinary presences, insofar as it concerns us, but the uncanny captures our attention more fully and hence is radiant to a greater degree.  The philosopher attains the constancy of the stars by attuning themselves to eternal rather than the transitory and fading distraction of the everyday.

Heidegger suggests that even later, in Plato’s time, when Being became interpreted as eidos and idea, it still carried the sense of a beautiful radiance, although at that time the sense is ambiguous and hence the essence of truth becomes ambiguous. On the one hand, Plato determined whatness, to ti einai, as what is constant in something despite the various particular instances of it (house as such, for instance). For Plato, the particulars are me on, not nothing, but deficient with respect to the universal because a particular is not in the fullness of its possibilities but restricted to a particular form.  It is in relation to, for instance, house that is seen in advance, that the houses “as” houses can be encountered.  The vehicle for this is the idea of the beautiful, and so “house” can appear incarnate in the mansion, merely be present in the average house, and be deficient or lacking in the broken down shack: sspecially in Fr. 54 in Heraclitus , aphanes, what “does not appear (Heidegger, HS, 82);” also cf HS, 143)

Fink: … We have indicated that in chrusos [gold], the glimmer of gold must also be thought. Here a relationship is thought between the light-character of fire and that into which it turns… Heidegger: We must think the radiant, the ornamental, and the decorative element together in cosmos, which was for the Greeks a customary thought (Heidegger, HS, 1 16). Hence, Heidegger is able to connect Heraclitus’ fire with the lustrous radiance of the gold of Pindar, “[t]he hearth is the site of being-homely … Latin vesta is the Roman name for the goddess ofthe hearth fire … para: alongside – beside, or more precisely, in the sphere of the same presence; parestios, the one who is present within the sphere of protection and intimacy belonging to the homestead and who belongs to the radiance and warmth and glow of this fire (HHTI, 106, my emphasis). “

Beings are what appear from hiddenness, like when you are watching tv and an intrusive thought pierces through that relaxed state, something negative presses on you (alego) into that state and gathers (logos/legein) you into focus on it.  This is the sense that Heraclitus’ gathering and laying logos still bears within it, following the older cognate of that word, “[t]he old word alego (alpha copulativum), archaic after Aeschylus and Pindar, should be recalled here: something ‘lies upon me,’ it oppresses and troubles me.” The Greek word for pain, “namely, algos … [is presumably] related to alego, which as the intensivum of lego means intimate gathering. In that case, pain would be that which gathers most intimately.” (Heidegger, Pa, OQB, 305-6)

Heraclitus, known for his doctrine of change and the unity of opposites, introduced what is often referred to as the “logic of mixed opposites.”  Heraclitus posited that everything is characterized by the interaction and interdependence of opposites. He famously said, “The way up and the way down are one and the same.” This means that opposites are not merely coexisting but are actually part of a single, dynamic process.  He believed that the tension between opposites creates harmony or the “logos” (the principle of order and knowledge).  Heraclitus can be seen as an early precursor to dialectical thinking where one idea (thesis) meets its opposite (antithesis) to form a synthesis, which is a new idea that reconciles the two. This logic of mixed opposites suggests that truth is found in the interaction of opposing viewpoints rather than in one side alone.  Unlike traditional logic where contradiction leads to falsehood, Heraclitus’s logic embraces contradictions as part of a deeper truth. This challenges straightforward binary oppositions and suggests a more fluid understanding of concepts. 

For Heraclitus “To be” means to be in the antagonism (polemos) and belonging together of subject (what you’re talking about) and predicate (what you’re saying about the subject).  Heraclitus’ logic of mixed opposites shows these two belong together but maintain their antagonism since you can only press so far into the specific individual entity until you encounter general Being.  Plato, in the Sophist, called Antisthenes denial of this  “the most laughable, katagelastotata (252b8),” because Antisthenes denied that something was to be understood by appealing to something beyond the thing itself, while Antisthenes himself tacitly adopted a whole slew of ontological structures that go beyond the mere entity at hand, such as einai, Being, choris, separate from, ton allown, the others, and kath auto, in itself (also cf Heidegger, N, 193). I encounter the dog “as” not me, for instance.  The addressing something as something, as a being, implies a kataphasis/apophasis, because it addresses a being in terms of what is beyond it, namely its Being. For example, with the piece of chalk materiality is always co-present. 

Aristotle said that in a judgement such as taking the table as black, there must be a prior understanding of the unity, ‘black table,’ whereby the unity is then set in relief against itself, ‘table as black.’ The ‘as’ is an as if because in setting them in relief, I can then, through synthesis, co-positing them together, identify the table explicitly in terms of its blackness, “as if they were one (Heidegger, PS, 126).” This synthesis offers the possibility of deception, because it is then possible to posit something with the table that does not belong to it, such as ‘the table is white,’ when it is in fact black. In this regard, there belongs to both kataphasis and apophasis, a diairesis and a synthesis, a taking apart of the original whole and a putting them back together in the form of the “as.”

On the one hand, Plato determined whatness, to ti einai, as what is constant (time) in something despite the various particular instances of it (house as such, for instance). For Plato, the particulars are me on, not nothing, but deficient with respect to the universal because a particular is not in the fullness of its possibilities but restricted to a particular form. It is in relation to, for instance, houseness that is seen in advance, that a particular entity can be encountered “as” a house.  I need to have a concept of grapeness invisibly (aphanes) before my mind’s eye to have a successful trip to the grocery store and not return home with a bag of apples by mistake. 

In a logos apophantikos there is an antagonistic separating off (diaresis) and combining (synthesis) as a judgment.  Heraclitus means by the term polemos, “not mere quarreling and wrangling but the conflict of the conflicting, that sets the essential and the nonessential, the high and the low, in their limits and makes them manifest.” (Heidegger, IM, 1 13-4)  This allows the judgment to be true or false.   Logos comes from legein, meaning to gather, which is gathering the antagonistic subject and predicate.  It is also the gathering of us, to use Heraclitus’ example of fire, lighting a fire in the dark gathers your being together and focuses your attention to it.  Similarly, a headache or stomach ache casts a pall over beings and causes them to appear/presence irritatingly.

THIS CONCLUDES AN INITIAL APPRAISAL OF THE ANAXIMANDER FRAGMENT.  NEXT TIME I WILL GET MORE INTO THE SPECIFICS OF HIM POETIZING BEING