Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle

CONTENTS

Translator's Foreword

INTRODUCTION

PART I
Aristotle and the Reception of His Philosophy

A. What Are Studies in the History of Philosophy?

A region within the history of the spirit as Objective, factual research? (3)—The historiological can be grasped only in philosophizing; both originally one (3)—Not a presupposition, but instead a pre-possession of the factical in questionability; not Objective (4)—The history of philosophy in these pages: Greeks and the Christian West (4)

B. The Reception of Aristotle’s Philosophy

a) Middle Ages and modernity

High esteem in the Middle Ages; for Neo-Kantians: uncritical metaphysics (5)—Then again: Aristotle a realist (6)

b) Antecedent Greekanizing of the Christian life-consciousness

The Middle Ages and Protestant theology lay the ground for German idealism (7)

c) Philological-historiological research

Critical edition of Aristotle’s collected works (7)—Influence on the emergence of phenomenology (8)

PART II
What is philosophy?

Aim and Method of the Following Investigation (11)

CHAPTER ONE
The Task of Definition

Its underestimation and overestimation (12)—The twofold underestimation: the task brushed aside: 1. following the example of the other sciences (12)—2. because philosophy can only be “lived” (13)—The twofold overestimation: tendency toward 1. a universal definition, 2. a rigorous definition (13)—Genuine intention in both errors; in the overestimation (13)—in the underestimation (14)

A. The Twofold Error in the Overestimation

a) The uncritical idea of definition

From traditional logic (14)—The definition of phenomenology (15)—“Possessing” the object is a claim, a pre-possession (15)— The formal sense of definition (16)—Formal indication (17)—Decisive: how the object becomes accessible (17)—Task: the radical problematic of logic (17)

b) The mistaking of the sense of “principle”

The principle the universal? (18)—The definition at the level of principle points toward that for which the object of the definition is a principle (18)—Basic mistake: philosophy taken, in the preconception, as a matter of fact (21)

B. The Underestimation of the Task of Definition

a) The decision in favor of “concrete work”

According to the ideal of the concrete sciences (22)—Even the concrete sciences have once made a decision of principle (23)—The concrete must be encountered in the definition of principle (24)— The definition is indicative, provides a directedness toward the sense (25)—The “formal” indication: direction of approach, not determinations of the object (26)—The “formal” (27)—Evidence and questionability (27)—The evidence-situation (28)

b) Philosophy as “lived experience”

Fanatical spirit (28)—Situation of the primal decision not a fixed ground, but a leap (29)—Misunderstandings (30)

c) Concept of philosophy

CHAPTER TWO
The Appropriation of the Situation in Which Understanding Is Rooted

A. Preconception from a Turn of Speech

The turn of speech actualizes a situation in which understanding is rooted (33)

a) Philosophy is philosophizing

“Philosophy is worldview?” (34)—Note concerning the only possible use of the expression “scientific philosophy” in these considerations (35)—Sciences originating out of philosophy (36)— Philosophy and art (37)

b) Plato on philosophizing

Philosophy a mode of self-comportment (38)—An independent comportment: its object determines the comportment, and the comportment, in its actualization, determines its object (39)

B. Comportment

Sense of relation, sense of actualization, sense of maturation, sense of holdings in comportment (40)

a) Philosophizing, according to its sense of relation, is cognitive comportment.

The definition interprets the sense of cognition (41)—The definition delimits for the sciences their region (42)

b) The definition of philosophy at the level of principle

Philosophy has no “region” as do the sciences (43)—Its object is the universal, the highest, the principle (43)—The principle of beings: the sense of Being (44)—Object of the definition—object of philosophy (44)—Object of the definition (content) decisive for the possession of the object (actualization) (45)—The formally indicative definition of philosophy at the level of principle (46)

C. The Situation of Access: the University

The access to the understanding is a moment of the definition (47)— Our situation: the university (48)—The difficulty is our historiological consciousness (49)—Objections against taking the university as the situation of access (49)

a) First objection: is philosophy university-philosophy?

There is no such thing as philosophy in general but only in the concrete, in its own place (50)

b) Second objection: can the accidental situation of the university be normative for philosophy?

Reform of the university? (52)—Guidelines for philosophizing (53)—Do they contradict the relevance of the situation? (54)— “Situation” not there “without further ado” (54)—The method of an Objective evaluation of the situation of the university (55)

c) The tradition

Historiological consciousness (55)—Spengler: expression of the spirit of the times (56)—The claim of the tradition to normativity (56)—Question of the tradition rooted in the question of factical life (57)—Recapitulation. The Objective method to an evaluation of the university resolves itself on its own (58)

PART III
Factical Life

The basic phenomenological categories (61)—Modern lifephilosophy. Rickert (62)—“Life” ambiguous, vague (62)

CHAPTER ONE
The Basic Categories of Life

Life as: 1. extension, 2. possibilities, 3. fate (64)—Prevailing sense: living = being (64)

A. Life and World

“World” the content-sense of life (65)—“Category” (phenomenologically) interpretive, alive in life itself (66)—Universal validity. Haziness, circuitousness. Repetition (67)

B. Relational Sense of Life: Caring

a) Character of the world in caring: meaningfulness

Encounter, experience, reality, value (68)—The ordinary theories reverse the nexus of grounding, rooted in Greek philosophy (69)— Movedness of factical life: unrest (Pascal) (70)

b) Directions of caring

Surrounding world, shared world, one’s own world (71)—One’s own world does not = Ego (71)—Not explicit, not standing out in relief (71)—Not self-re¶ection, psychology (71)—Not epistemology (73)—Categories alive in facticity (74)—Extrinsic criticism senseless (75)

C. The Categories of the Relationality of Life

a) Inclination

Proclivity impels life into its world (76)—“Metaphysics”? Dispersion; self-satisfaction (76)

b) Distance (and abolition of distance)

The “before” oneself (77)—Life mistakes itself, mis-measures (77)—Distance transported into dispersion, hyperbolically (78)

c) Sequestration

The “before” transferred into the world, eluding itself (79)—Larvance, disguising (79)—“Infinity of life”: interminability of possible mistakes. The elliptical (80)

d) The “easy” (Aristotle)

Making things easy, looking away from oneself, decline, guilt, haziness, carefreeness (81)—Structures of caring (82)

D. Retrospect and Prospect

Relation between historiological and systematic philosophy a pseudoproblem (82)—Philosophizing a radical actualization of the historiological (82)—The same problems in the “introduction” as in the interpretation of Aristotle (82)—Difficulty from philosophy being taken as an Object (83)—Main components of philosophy: access and appropriation; formal indication of that (84)—Characters of movedness of facticity (85)—Further course of the consideration: situation of “living in the sciences” (85)—Knowledge of principles in the interpretation of Aristotle (86)

E. The Categories of Movement. Relucence and Prestruction

They determine the categories of relationality (87)

a) The categories of movement in inclination

Dispersion, cultural life. Interpreted in an Objective sense as the fundamental reality, life conceals the insecurity announced in factical life (88)

b) The categories of movement in the abolition of distance

Building up of worldly distantiations, rank, etc.; the hyperbolic (90)—Worldly origin of sciences, Objectivity (90)

c) The categories of movement in sequestration

Relucent: life looks away from itself (91)—Prestructive: ways out, important things, the elliptical (92)

F. Connections

Connection between the categories of movement and the categories of relationality in actualization (92)—“Actualization”: wordmysticism? (93)—The characters of movedness becoming more concrete; movement = self-movement (94)—“Formation,” clarification (“theory and practice”) (95)—In caring relucence, life forms for itself a surrounding world (96)—Surrounding world not objects round about in an order (96)—Factical life cares to become set in its ways of living in the world (96)

CHAPTER TWO
Ruinance

Ruinance of movedness, which “is” life in itself, as itself, for itself, out of itself: i.e., against itself (98)—Ruinance and intentionality (98) Presupposition of ruinance a counter-movedness (99)

A. Tracing Back and Repeating the Interpretation

Caring not “struggle for existence” (pragmatism) (100)—Movement and clarification in facticity are one (101)

a) Heightened care: apprehension

Caring takes itself into care (101)—Clarification fallen into ruinance, ambiguity (102)

b) Chairological characters

How life announces itself in ruinance, “feelings”; the “Being-to-me” (102)—The historiological. Time not a framework but a mode of movedness (103)—Aggravation of ruinance: abolition of time (104)

B. Four Formal-Indicational Characters of Ruinance

a) Prohibiting function of the formal indication

Characters of ruinance not properties (105)—They appear already in caring, in its categories of movedness (106)

b) The “whereto” of ruinance: nothingness

Direction primarily not a spatial concept (107)—The “whereto” is the nothingness of factical life (108)—Formal nothingness (108)— Dialectic (108)—The nothingness of factical life not (fall-breaking) emptiness but “nullification” (109)—The non-occurrence of factical life itself, brought to maturation by itself, in ruinant existence (110)

c) Objectivity

The immediacy of the experience of the world a maturation of factically ruinant life (111)—Proper immediacy of questionability. Dialectical mediation (Hegel) (111)

d) Questionability

Dialogue of immediate life with itself (112)—Philosophical interpretation is counter-ruinant movedness in the mode of access of questionability, in a struggle against its own ruinance (114)—Confrontation of factical life with its past. The temptative (114)—In ruinance privation becomes validated: that something is lacking to factical life (115)—Privation an Objective state? (115)

APPENDIX I
Presupposition

Presupposition

Methodological re¶ection is a way in movedness (119)— “Pre-” and “sup-position” (119)

1. How “Sciences” Have Their Presupposition

Original presuppositions overlooked, re¶ection rejected (120)

2. Sense of Movedness in the Phenomenological Interpretation of Philosophizing

Philosophizing counter-ruinant: radical appropriation of the presupposition (121)—Appropriation of the situation: a mode of factical life (122)—Situation not simply present, in the latest appearances, etc. (122)

3. The Conditionality of the Interpretation

The interpretation is not to be taken dogmatically (122)—Therefore “relativism,” “skepticism”? These concepts, just like that of the “absolute,” originate in a determine preconception of knowledge: Objectivity (123)—”Absolute truth” (123)—Law of non-contradiction (123)—The absolute system of moral values (124)—It is not demonstrability but the envitalizing of the object that is decisive in philosophy (125)—The basic phenomenological stance (125)

4. A Way to the Object of Philosophy

Man; three sets of alternatives for consideration (126)—Philosophy penetrates to the roots of one’s own life (128)—Important to understand the beginning (the Greeks) (128)—Questioning concerns the ontological sense, not a mere pre-given conceptuality! (128)

5. The Direction of Philosophical Questioning

Preconception of the object of philosophy is the actualization of this object’s own tendency: to be in the mode of self-possession (129)—Not self-observation, Ego-metaphysics; but in each case on the basis of the lived life-world (129)—In the question of the “I am,” the “am” is decisive, not the “I” (130)—Descartes’ preconception of Being as the indubitable (130)—The question of the “I am” actualizes itself as the question “Am I?” Thereby the “I” is undetermined (131)

6. The Ontological Sense of the “Am”

The ontological sense of the “am” first comes to maturation in questioning; i.e., factical life properly exists in its temporality (132)—Proper character of resistance; not “absolute,” i.e., immutable (133)—Philosophical interpretation counter-ruinant; preservation of its results covering up, ruinant (134)—Phenomenological interpretation of the basic experiences in the preconception (135)

The Problematic of the Preconception and the Possible Discussion Concerning, and Critique of, the “Objectivity” of Philosophical Interpretation

Appropriate critique possible only on the ground of the preconception of existence (135)

APPENDIX II
Loose pages

Editors’ Afterword

English-German Glossary

German-English Glossary

Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle (GA 61) [GA App]

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